Golf Irish Open: It's a bit like a complex jigsaw puzzle where, the closer you get to completing the work, the harder it actually is to pinpoint exactly where the pieces should go. For Padraig Harrington, who missed his first cut of the season at the British Open last week, the answer - despite his niggling neck injury - has been found by spending hours on the practice range.

Yesterday, where else but on the range, the Dubliner - still ranked eighth in the world - sought to find more answers to a swing that has troubled him for some weeks. If there weren't quite cries of "Eureka!" to be heard in the run-up to the Nissan Irish Open which starts tomorrow at Baltray, there was at least a sense that some questions were ready to be answered.

"My game's not been in good shape for the past few weeks, I've struggled," he confessed. "I've just spent four hours on the range, which is not normally a good sign of a guy happy with his game. But you go through periods where you have to work to find things . . . and I've improved over the years, so it becomes harder to find the things that are wrong."

Thankfully for Harrington, there would seem to be light at the end of the tunnel. "I've figured out a few things, and the past couple of weeks have been good because of what I have worked on and I should come out a better player."

So, what is the solution that has been found? In many ways, it's a simple one: the grip. He explained: "I've went through a period of swinging clubs on good lines yet not playing well on the course. I've been struggling with my ball flight, hitting it very high.

My grip got a bit weak which meant that my hands had to get active to keep the ball low, so I've now strengthened my grip which is awkward for playing. It feels terrible. But with the stronger grip, I have to keep my hands inactive and I've changed my ball flight. It's something I wish I'd had three, four weeks ago . . . it is one of the toughest changes to make, you have to hit a lot of golf balls to get comfortable with it. But it is never too late!"

Harrington, who has been paired with ex-British Open champion Ben Curtis, who lost his title at Royal Troon last week, and Phillipe Lima, of France, for the first two rounds, remembers first attending the Irish Open at Portmarnock as a young boy. "One of those ice-cream days, sunshine and hard fairways . . . and I remember seeing guys hitting in wedge shots no more than 10 feet off the ground and wondering, 'wow, how do they do that?'," he recalled.

In those days, the Irish Open was one of the flagship tournaments on the European Tour. Nowadays, it is not.

But Harrington insisted, "it is one of the most popular on tour with the players. Times have changed and now you get all the good players and good tour players coming, but you miss out on the very elite players who play a worldwide schedule and, just after the (British) Open, they don't feel like they can fit it in.

"It's still a premier event, (but) it does miss the elite top few because it is a tough schedule and you can't play in everything unfortunately. When you come to a course like this, that's a pity. But for other commercial realities out there, it means guys have to play a different schedule."

Yesterday, the tournament lost another big name draw, but not by choice. Thomas Bjorn, who lost in a play-off last year to Michael Campbell, had to withdraw through illness - his caddie Billy Foster was actually in Baltray when the news came through - but the initial impression of the links of those who have arrived is that the course is in tremendous condition.

"I'd love to line up all 156 players at the end of the week and try and find someone with a bad word to say about the course. I don't think it would be possible," said Harrington, who used to play a regular weekly fourball here with friends in his amateur days. "It's as linksy as Troon, although it's probably firmer here around the greens than last week."

Yet, Harrington for all of his knowledge of the course, disputed that would be any advantage.

"I don't subscribe to local knowledge," he insisted. "Yes, you can have some gains . . . but you're also carrying some baggage also, some fears. I can see someone, who has never played this golf course, come out and play it better or as well as the guy who has played here before. Because the guy who has played here will remember. You'll remember not to hit it here, or there; or a place where you couldn't get up and down."

If Harrington, who failed to make the cut at Portmarnock a year ago, would seem to be downplaying his prospects, at least the news on his neck injury would seem to be more positive than it was.

Before and after each session on the range, he's been working with his sports therapist Dale Ricahrdson. "We could have got to the root of it at this stage," he said, "(I think, we've) sorted it out." The next few days will tell its own tale.