PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON feels he will have to produce some of his very best golf to defend his Iskandar Johor Open title in Malaysia this week.

Harrington ended a two-year wait for a title 12 months ago with a three-shot victory at Horizon Hills Golf and Country Club in Johor Bahru when the tournament was part of the Asian Tour.

Now co-sanctioned for the first time with the European Tour, Harrington will have to fend off competition from Henrik Stenson, Camilo Villegas, Anthony Kim and Louis Oosthuizen among others to return to the winner’s circle.

It will be no easy task according to Harrington, who missed the cut at last week’s Singapore Open.

“There are 156 guys here this week, and most – if not all – of them are very good players. So you’re going to have to play very well and hole a lot of putts to win the tournament,” the three-time major winner said.

“It’s very hard to predict who’s going to win a golf tournament these days because pretty much every player in the field is quite capable on their day. So it’s always better to focus on your own game rather than on anyone else. All you can do is just give it your best shot and see where it takes you.”

Harrington, though, expects to take on a much different Horizon Hills course from a year ago, where he triumphed with a winning score of 20 under par.

“It’s always nice to come back to a golf course where you’ve won before. It obviously comes with certain expectations, and hopefully I can live up to them this week,” he added.

“The course is very different to the one we played last year. A few of the holes have been lengthened, the rough’s much heavier and the fairways are very soft, whereas they were pretty firm last year.

“So whilst we were getting 30 to 40 yards of run here last year, you probably won’t be getting any this year. So it’ll be interesting to see how it affects the scoring – I certainly don’t think the winning score will be as low as last year’s.”

Oosthuizen, meanwhile, is keen to build on his tie for third in Singapore last week. “Last week in Singapore was good. I’ve been playing pretty well for a while now, and whilst it was obviously disappointing not to get the win, I was still very happy with how I hit the ball last week – especially on the second and third days,” said the former Open champion.

“I haven’t played this course before, but I would imagine it’ll be a fairly similar test to last week.”