The Irishman slammed championship organisers the USGA for a penal set-up of the New York course but was equally critical of his friend and fellow major champion Mickelson for not only his decision to play the moving ball but also defending it. Mickelson has since apologised for his actions.

“It was a complete moment of madness that should have been treated as a complete moment of madness,” Harrington said during his pre-Irish Open media conference.

“Obviously Phil was making a statement to what he did. It got to him and he should have just put up his hand and said, ‘look, it got to me’, that’s it.

“It was a bizarre incident, there’s no doubt about it. I think as bizarre as the incident was, I think it would have been simpler for him just to come out and say, it got to me and I made a crazy error of judgment. You know, you don’t want to defend the indefensible, basically, is what he went about doing.”

Harrington believes golf’s rulemakers should now move to prevent a recurrence of the Mickelson incident.

“I think defending it, it wasn’t a nice thing to see. It shouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t advocate it being allowed to happen again, and if necessary, there needs to be a rule change.

“If they are happy that you can consciously make a stroke on a moving ball, you know, that should be changed. It definitely should be changed. I know that there’s other instances where you can hit a moving ball. If your ball is moving in a water hazard, you’re allowed to hit it.

Obviously on a double-hit you’re allowed to hit a moving ball. I think three instances you’re allowed where it’s not penalised, but that one I had never seen before, and it needs to be a rule change that you can’t do it. Straightforward.

“And clearly it wasn’t in his best interest to do it. He could have taken a stroke and distance and would have been putting for two shots less if he took a stroke and distance, so it wasn’t a clever thing to do.

"As he said, it was conscious effort; that he thought this is a good idea, but you can’t really defend the indefensible.”

Nor did Harrington let the USGA off the hook for its part in setting up Shinnecock Hills in such a way that it got out of control and penalised good strokes as well as bad ones.

“I did look at the US Open, and I said, it’s the first time I sat out a major and questioned whether I wanted to be there,” he said.

“At the end of the day, there’s too many good players in the game of golf now for anybody to set a golf course up to keep us at level par without going over the edge.

"You have to focus on four to eight under par… The USGA has to realise that over time, they are going to have to realise, you can’t keep that many players par, unless you do silly things.

“There’s so many players who are good players, somebody is going to play well on a good set-up. The greens, obviously they were just very bumpy, watching it on TV.

"The conditions, some of the pin positions, just plainly looked wrong on TV.”