PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON’S back is up against the wall. The countdown clock has stopped, and the time has come to take whatever swing – good, bad or indifferent – he currently possesses to the toughest course on the major rota. If his patience has been tested of late and his confidence battered by a series of missed cuts, the Dubliner knows there is little more to be done other than face the music.

As he put it at Bethpage yesterday, “when there’s a lightning storm, it is too late to get up to thatch the roof.”

In other words, Harrington – who started work on upgrading his swing over the winter recess only for it to drag further and longer into the season than he’d anticipated – must accept his lot and hope it will all come right once he tees it up in tomorrow’s first round alongside Tiger Woods and Angel Cabrera.

“I think my results this season are very much a reflection of how I’ve played. I haven’t played well and certainly haven’t made things happen . . . I was number three in the world and I wanted to get better, and the way to get better is to improve things and change things and if that means stepping back, that’s okay in the short term.

“I didn’t intend to drag it so far into the season. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I did have good intentions . . . I’m going to be patient.

“I know where I am. I understand the process that will bring me back to form.”

If there is any confirmation required by Harrington that he has done the right thing, even if it has led to a period of indifferent form, then Tiger Woods’s observations are worth noting.

“After I won the Masters (in 1997) by 12 strokes, I changed my swing. People thought I was crazy for that. I said, ‘just wait, just be patient with it’. And in 1999 and 2000 I won 17 times.”

So, it would seem, patience is the key for Harrington as he seeks to rediscover the type of form that last season enabled him to retain the British Open and win the US PGA.

But there is also an honesty about Harrington’s self-reflection, coming into Bethpage on the back of missed cuts in his last three events: the Irish Open last month and, more recently, the Memorial and the St Jude.

“I prepared reasonably well the last two weeks and I had poor results. I’m obviously not playing my very best golf at the moment but there’s not much more I can do at this stage. I just have to be patient and just do the right things over and over and let it come back itself . . . There’s no forcing it.”

He added: “Obviously, I’m not confident because of what’s gone on the last two weeks. I believe it will be as prepared as I can be going out there on Thursday, and that’s all I can ask. That’s the key for me.

Just because I am not playing well enough, not confident, doesn’t mean I should start changing things. I’ve got to accept that what won me the other majors is the only way forward for me winning this major. I have to assume my swing will be there on Thursday.”

The clock has stopped on his swing reconstruction. Time will tell what fate has in store for him here.