PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON and Tiger Woods will keep us wondering about the state of their games right up until they strike their opening tee-shots in the WGC Accenture Matchplay Championship, high in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson, Arizona, on Wednesday.

But while the uncertainty surrounding Woods’ eagerly-awaited return has everything to do with his recovery from knee surgery eight months ago, Harrington is simply searching for trust – and his psychologist – after successive missed cuts at Pebble Beach and Riviera Country Club.

Harrington posted a pair of dog-eared, one-over-par 72s that successively revealed weaknesses in almost every element of his game: driving, iron play, chipping and putting.

Yet he was not lamenting the fact that his swing coach, Bob Torrance, was 5,000 miles away in Scotland; he was simply impatient that he would have to wait until today to sit down with his mental guru, Bob Rotella, in the serenity of the Tortolita Mountains.

Before leaving Los Angeles for an earlier than expected trip to Tucson, Harrington assessed the state of his game after three frustrating weeks on the US west coast.

Already thinking ahead to the US Masters in six weeks, Harrington said: “I do talk to him (Bob Torrance) on the phone. But there ain’t anything wrong with the swing. It is the other Bob I need to talk to.”

Staring into space, he added: “It is lack of competition really. Lack of trust. I am seeing Northern Trust Open on the poster over there and it just jumped into my mind. It’s lack of focus.

“A good example: I worked hard on my putting yesterday for a couple of hours and I certainly feel like I did some good work. But it caused me to putt horribly today. That happens sometimes. As long as I am not missing those putts in five or six weeks’ time, that is the main thing.”

Tidying up the loose ends is Harrington’s mission now and he points out that he is no longer confused about what has been going wrong with his game. It’s rust, plain and simple.

“At the start of the year, essentially I hit a few bad shots and I wasn’t sure why it was happening,” he said. “Now I am quite clear about the cause and effect.

“This is normally how I feel the first week I am out and it has taken me two weeks to get to here.”