Padraig Harrington has been putting in the hours to cure a hook before tackling this week’s AT&T National Pro-am at Pebble Beach. The Open and US PGA champion, whose first event in America this season saw him finish joint 24th last week, is confident his game is moving in the right direction.

“The range I was on I managed to close six nights last week and I closed it both nights this week as well,” said Harrington today.

“A lot of practice has been done to try and figure it out, and I am more hopeful that I’m kind of getting to the root cause of it. I obviously struggled last week. I knew I was struggling at the start of the week.

“But you kind of expect that when you come out after the winter. I’ve done quite a bit of work and what tends to happen is when you are changing things and working on things you overdo it.

“It does take a little bit of competition, a little bit of playing to figure that out.”

Harrington’s partner is once again JP McManus and they are paired with Paul McGinley and Dermot Desmond.

“It’s entertaining for me,” added the world number three. “We have a very relaxed week off the golf course and I’ll try harder to win the team event than I will the individual event this week.

“If I’m making bogey at a hole or something and my partner has a putt for birdie, I’m over there reading it and it cheers me up if he makes the birdie. I get into the idea of the team event, of trying to do well in that and that keeps me going in the individual event. It just works very well for me.”