NONE OF it has been of his volition. But Pádraig Harrington has orchestrated a mini-challenge for himself as the evenings close and golf moves towards the desert.

More by stealth than design, the triple-major winner’s swing and grip meddling took out a large chunk of the 2009 season. When the perfectionist sought to clear up an imperfection, six months had passed and his year was limping towards serious disappointment.

Between January and July Harrington missed the cut eight times. Then as if a light was tripped he began to perform, earning five top fives and two second places. Those latter months have clearly been kinder and the Race to Dubai has allowed him throw down the gauntlet and create his own stimulation over the next month.

The natural progression in his mind is that a win would do nicely, not just to close out the year but also validate the barren six months and the changes, ones that he believes will take him into next season fitter and stronger than he has ever been.

“The period when it wasn’t going so well . . . it wasn’t overly frustrating. I was in control,” says the lean, tanned Harrington with a certainty that furrows his brow.

“The great thing for me is that it was a big eye-opener, that I had that control over my game. When my priority was more to do with results, the results came back.

“It was frustrating more for people who were outsiders and didn’t have control . . . . All the way through I was making the decisions. They might be described as poor decisions, but they were my decisions and that meant it wasn’t so frustrating.

“There was a period in the first six months of the year where I cared more about how I played than my scores. Now all the interest is what score I’m shooting at the end of the week.”

As a student of his own game Harrington is never less than attentive and diligent. Over the years his failures on course have been confronted without fear and with his swing doctor, Bob Torrance, the two have never shied away from putting his game on the dissection table. Harrington has become Harrington’s best analyst and who would argue with two British Opens and a USPGA title.

What his preoccupation is now is to time the changes he needs to make and know when to fit them into a season without it imploding in front of his eyes.

“The changes? I’m trying to resist going head-first into it again before the end of the season. In the middle of the season I got to grips with what I wanted to do,” he explains. “I’ve been very slowly working on it through the last summer months but it’s secondary on my focus, although coming into the last weeks the desire to change and give it a 100 per cent priority is bubbling up again,

“I’m trying to resist because haven’t won this year and I want to go out there and win. So I’m trying to stay focused on the last four events for me and resist that temptation.”

He will play Singapore, the HSBC and Dubai in the coming weeks in a mood that is both expectant and curious about whether he can deliver on his own applied pressure. There is no bravado, no hot air and he looks at the fag end of the race as a scientist looks at his equation and expects it to balance. If it doesn’t then Harrington will take out an atom here and apply a catalyst there and eureka its atomic fission once again.

“Golf has a number of different requirements and functions,” he says. “It really is like juggling six or 10 balls. You’ve got to keep all of them in the air. If you focus on one ball as I did . . . you do drop the ball elsewhere.

“There’s no doubt that all the way through my short game was poor for the first six months of the year. When I’d made changes before I had managed to keep that sharp. That’s what really showed up. Definitely I let the short game slip and that cost me in that period. ”

Next season has become irresistible. But he doesn’t want to wish away the remaining pickings. He believes winning breeds winning.

“Maybe I have sacrificed the year of competing in the majors, or at least the first three majors. I didn’t realise I was going to do that and consciously I wouldn’t have done that. But looking back it’s probably worth it.”