Pádraig aiming to go with the flow

93rd USPGA CHAMPIONSHIP COUNTDOWN:AS A coach, Peter Cowen is the man with the Midas touch. And, perhaps, it was natural Pádraig Harrington – a three-time Major champion who had lost his way – would look to the English swing guru for salvation.

Harrington has slipped from third in the world rankings to a current position of 69th as a host of players emerged from his slipstream to overtake him

The initial approach was made by Harrington to Cowen in Akron last Saturday – “Last week, it was frustrating. I played well in practice but as I got into the tournament, it got worse and worse and I bit the bullet and asked Pete for his opinion,” said the Dubliner.

But, with this week’s USPGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club getting in the way of any serious surgery on the player’s swing, the real work will come further down the road.

Yesterday, though, Cowen – who is coach to recent Major winners Louis Oosthuizen, Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke – admitted he was taken aback by Harrington’s own revelation to him that he didn’t know what he was working on.

As Cowen described the initial conversation, “He asked me as a friend if I’d give him an opinion on his golf swing and why it’s obviously not working as well as it should do. Obviously, I asked him a bit on what he was working on and he actually didn’t know, which I found amazing. He said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t have a clue’. I asked what he’d worked on in the past, and he said, ‘this, this and this . . . but I don’t really understand’.”

Cowen (60), already coaches 17 current European Tour players and is reluctant to take on any more. “I am trying to cut down, desperately trying to cut down. My wife’s told me I have to cut down,” he said. But he reacted to Harrington’s contact because of a friendship established in the very early days of the Irishman’s professional career.

Of the possibly new relationship, Cowen said: “What I could do is occasionally go down to his house on my weeks off and just do a day with him and put him on the right track. Really, he doesn’t need the high maintenance he thinks he needs. But he needs to understand his practice has got to be as productive as it can be to give the improvement. If it’s not productive, he’s just bashing balls. I see myself in that – I did that. I thought bashing more and more balls would actually do it.

“If I had my time over again, I wouldn’t bash anywhere near as many balls, even though I liked hitting balls. I’d have had much more structured practice on what the body needs to do and tell the body what it needs to do.”

Of what appeals to him about Cowen as a potential coach, Harrington – who recently split with Bob Torrance – said: “The fact all his players swing the club differently, which is a big plus when you’re looking for a coach. You don’t want a coach who forces one swing onto everybody, you want a coach who teaches players. You only have to look at the players Pete coaches to know there is not a swing that looks the same between them.”

Harrington will go with what he has for the USPGA, which starts tomorrow. It has been a poor season so far for him – he missed the cut at both the US Masters and the British Open and currently lies outside the top-125 on the US Tour moneylist who qualify for the season-ending FedEx Cup series.

“This is a big week because it’s a Major,” said Harrington, “and you always want to feel like you did things right in preparation. To get your preparations right is half the battle. But when it comes to hitting shots down the stretch, no matter how good you’re hitting the ball, it’s much more to do with your mental game than it is to do with your physical game. It’s important to try and get that right, to not flog yourself to death trying to get something correct. Your head is the thing that’s going to handle the pressure more than anything else at the end of the day.”

He added: “This year I have played well in practice all the time, but it hasn’t done my any good. At this stage I don’t know where I stand and I am trying to keep it like that. I don’t want to have any expectations, basically.”

Maybe that’s the way forward?