DULUTH, Ga. -- Padraig Harrington doesn’t look like a man who has been embroiled in a full-scale war with the golf gremlins.

He finished fifth in the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship, posted a respectable 9-under-par total at the Ford Championship at Doral, and but for a couple of 74s on the weekend, he would have had a top-10 finish at The Honda Classic.

Even his missed cut last week at THE PLAYERS Championship didn’t distress him all that much. “I hit a lot of good shots,” he admitted.

So, after he posted an early 4-under-par 68 in the opening round of the BellSouth Classic, it’s difficult to understand what Harrington is talking about when he says he’s been battling with his golf swing.

“I spent nine weeks off the course in the winter,” he said. “And I really had gotten into it. (There was) a lot of technical talk going on. I’m doing the same thing now, but not to the same extent. I’m still working on a few things, but I’m obviously a little bit more settled about how to manage my game on the golf course.”

Swing changes are nothing new for Harrington. He claims to be always tinkering with something in his game. On Monday of this week, for example, he changed the grips on his clubs, going back to the old Golf Pride grips he used several years ago, rotating them slightly to the left until the seam fit comfortably in the pad of his hand.

“It’s just experimenting until you find something you’re comfortable with,” he says. Even then he says he knew he would get one of them wrong, though. “The 3-wood. That one’s still off a little bit.”

As for the swing itself, Harrington has been working all season on increasing his right leg action to speed up his hips on the downswing. He’s also been working on rotating his left forearm through impact and on keeping that arm close to his body. This produces a low follow-through where the hands never get much higher than his shoulders as he finishes.

With that many swing thoughts rumbling around in his noggin, it’s easy to understand why Harrington hasn’t felt as though he could forget the mechanics and just let it happen. The Irishman says this is the first week all season that he hasn’t had one or more swing demons whispering techno-garbage in his ear during his round. The resulting 68 in the opening round in Atlanta has him feeling confident that his days of mental anguish might be over.

“I’m obviously getting a little more comfortable with what I’m doing,” he said. “That’s always the case that you need to get more competitive play. More competition is always needed when you have things going on in your head; you need to play more to settle down.”

He seems to have settled into the TPC Sugarloaf very nicely. “There’s no point in being here unless you’re trying to win,” he says.

This could be Harrington’s last opportunity to win at this event. With the BellSouth Classic moving to May next year, Harrington fears the tournament will lose many of its European participants who have traditionally come to Atlanta between THE PLAYERS Championship and the Masters.

“May would be the Irish Open time, Irish Open, British Masters and PGA, which is a rough time if you’re European,” Harrington explained. “If I don’t play the Irish Open, I just can’t go home. I would love to make an effort to come and play, because I have had good results (in the BellSouth Classic). I like Atlanta, too. It will be something I make an effort to try to put on the schedule.”

But even if schedules collide in the future, there is always this year. All Harrington needs to do is keep the gremlins at bay for three more days, and he has a great chance of picking up his third PGA TOUR win.