GOLF:New season, new swing, same old determination. PHILIP REID talks to Pádraig Harrington as he returns to action

A PLAYER’S position in the world rankings is a badge of honour, rather than anything tangible. Yet Pádraig Harrington’s fall, from sixth this time last year to 26th, provides adequate testimony to what he refers to as his frustration with last season.

And it may explain why he is eager to put his much-changed mechanics to a first examination of the season in the Abu Dhabi Championship, which starts on Thursday.

All the time spent practising – such as working in the nets at his home into the early hours, until one o’clock on Friday morning last, as a case in point – only becomes relevant when put to the test in the white-knuckle environment of a tournament.

As such, the Abu Dhabi tournament, the biggest so far of the season, should provide the perfect launch-pad for Harrington.

With no fewer than nine Irish players in the field – with Harrington joined by Graeme McDowell, who has moved up to a career-high fourth in the world, Rory McIlroy, Darren Clarke, Peter Lawrie, Gareth Maybin, Damien McGrane, Michael Hoey and Paul McGinley – there is a sense this week that the time has come for the winter cobwebs to be well and truly shaken off.

Harrington’s swing changes include getting rid of the so-called trigger he has used to start his swing, weakening his grip and adopting a new putting routine, and they appear, on the surface, to be significant.

But they have been supervised by his long-time coach Bob Torrance and carried out in conjunction with Paul Hurrion, a leading sports biomechanist, and technicians at the Titleist performance institute.

Although he has been working on the changes for six weeks, Harrington acknowledges it will take a number of weeks competing on tour to really trust them.

“There’s always going to be teething problems when you bring these things out. It’s like being a soccer player spending six weeks learning how to kick the ball with your left foot . . . and the first time the ball comes in during a match, you automatically try and switch it onto your stronger foot.

“I have been in the net doing a lot of technical work. Now I need to go to the golf course and see what stuff is overdone and what stuff is not overdone.

“What stuff works and what doesn’t work, and develop it with play in mind.

“I am happy to give it until after Doral (in March) and, certainly going into Houston (the week before the Masters), I would hope that I wouldn’t have to have any thoughts about what I am doing with my trigger or anything like that.

“I hope it is well and truly in there. They say it takes six weeks to make a physical change and at least another six weeks to make that change where it becomes the dominant (thought).

“The first six weeks you physically change it and the next six weeks you can’t go back. After the first six weeks you can never go back and you are in between both then and hoping to come out on the other side.”

There’s a theory from Moe Norman that golf is basically a simple, natural game, where you hit “the dumb guy” (the ball) with “the dumb guy” (the club). Could Harrington not adopt such an approach?

“No, that’s not me. I do that with my putting and that’s why I’m good with my putting. I do that with my chipping and that’s why I’m good with my chipping.

“But my natural golf swing, if you looked at it when I was a kid, always had a lot of moving parts, even before I started.

“At the end of the day, I have to develop my golf swing. If I stood up there and tried to swing naturally, yes, I’d have good rhythm and good shots for a limited period of time. But mine has to be worked on, whereas, my putting stroke, I’ve always swung it on a nice path without having to worry about it. It’s not to be tinkered with, whereas the long game is.”

Harrington’s schedule for the coming weeks is more intensive than last year, aimed at being primed for Augusta. After back-to-back tournaments in the Middle East, this week’s Abu Dhabi event and next week’s Volvo Champions tournament in Bahrain, Harrington’s focus will be in the States, with the ATT Pebble Beach in February kicking off a run that takes in the LA Open, the Accenture Matchplay, the WGC in Doral, the Transitions tournament and the Houston Open the week before the Masters.

In all, he will have played in eight tournaments ahead of Augusta.

So, he heads into this week’s event as a work in progress with the observation, “That doesn’t mean I don’t believe I can win. But there is no doubt it would be easier for me to play in two weeks’ time than it will be (in Abu Dhabi). And it will be easier for me in three weeks’ time.

“When you have done six weeks (work), and every time you have swung the golf club you have tried to have three or four different swing thoughts and feel everything that is going on and be very active – yet when you go to play a tournament, you are trying to be the opposite.

“I won’t be able to shut it down completely and I am just warning myself that when I talk of bedding in that it is not going to be perfect every week and it doesn’t have to be perfect every week.”

Indeed, as Harrington goes about kick-starting his season, it is with one rather simple thought. “Last year isn’t a hard year to beat, so that is a good way of looking at it too,” he said.