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The three-time major winner has struggled to regain the form that helped him to back-to-back Open titles in 2007 and 2008 as well as the 2008 PGA Championship.
Asked how his game was at present, Harrington told RTÉ Sport: “I’m putting better, which is a major thing. My expectations are probably a little bit too high on the rest of my game. I keep feeling like I’m going to play great and then I go out there and I disappoint myself.
“It’s a strange part; I’m trying to work through it. But essentially, as I feel like I’m hitting the ball better and swinging the club better over the last couple of years, I go out there thinking I’m not going to hit any bad shots.”
This approach has an immediate down-side, he suggested, as “I’m putting myself under a lot of pressure not to hit a bad shot, and when I do I’m getting frustrated with it.
“I know it sounds weird but I have to really ease off myself a bit on my own expectations on my long game, for sure. And if I do do that it will probably improve because of it.”
Harrington recalled 2012, a year in which he struggled, when his ball-striking was very impressive but “both my putting and chipping had gone off”.
Now though, he said, his putting is back, better than it has ever been, but “my chipping is not”.
"I’m just not as good a chipper as I was years ago, and that was my biggest strength"
He admitted he has struggled to deal with new grooves imposed following a new rule in 2010.
“If I was using the old grooves I wouldn’t have a problem. I have to figure a way [to get used to the new grooves]; if I got used to them I would certainly change my style of chipping, because of the box grooves. I’m just not as good a chipper as I was years ago, and that was my biggest strength.”
“I would have been renowned as a good putter, but in actual fact what I was really good at was chipping the ball the really close and didn’t put myself under a lot of pressure with my putting.”
He said that the new grooves had caused inconsistency in his chipping, with some getting the required spin and others simply floating.
“If you can’t control the trajectory of your chip shots it’s very hard to land them on the spot,” he said. “A lot of times I’m standing over my chip shot and I’m not sure what’s going to come out.”
He said he had returned to a wedge he had used “as a kid” to try to go back a softer style of chipping, and that he was using a softer ball.
“I’m using the spiniest version at the moment, and the softest version ... [but] the distance is such an important thing as well, off the tees, nowadays. You can’t afford to give up on distance. So it’s a catch-22.”
