In a singular game, Padraig Harrington is a singular man, a golfer who has turned himself from a serial runner-up into a serial winner.

Although his second place in his last tournament of 2008 was his 33rd, it is more significant that he has won the past two major championships and three of the past six. Sportsmen, never mind fellow golfers, look at Harrington, 37, and wonder to themselves: how has he done it?

“What Paddy has done is take his mental game to a new level,” Trevor Immelman, the Masters champion, said. “He has obviously found a way to do what Rotella [Bob Rotella, the game's leading psychologist] says week in and week out. It is very simple to understand but very difficult to do. You have to be very disciplined and he is.”

Harrington smiled at hearing Immelman's name. “A couple of years ago Trevor wanted to know what Bob Rotella had told me and he seemed relieved to discover it was the same Bob had been telling him,” the Irishman said. “There is nothing secretive or mystical about Bob. He is like a schoolteacher. He gives you your homework, your routines to do and whether you do it or not is up to you.”

The ears of Caroline Harrington, Padraig's wife, pricked up at the mention of the word routine. “Routines are huge for Padraig,” she said. “He always exercises first thing in the morning and last thing at night for example. When it is time to practise, he practises. We've been together for 20 years and married for 11 and he has never seen a domestic bill or a credit card statement.

“Padraig and household chores do not go together. I've taken him to the supermarket with me perhaps twice and it was not worth my while. I don't think he knows how to write a cheque and he doesn't know that our cheques have his name on the bottom of them. But he is very good at routines.”

Harrington turned professional in the autumn of 1995 with a swing that was best described as being that of an amateur. Ewen Murray, the commentator who remembers Harrington from his amateur days, looked at it on a new slow-motion device on Sky television last week and was struck by how technically correct it had become. “It is compact, tight and simple,” Murray said. “It has gone from being workmanlike to a classic swing.”

This is the result of hours spent on the practice ground working with Bob Torrance. “Three years ago my swing stopped changing every week,” Harrington said. “I am not saying it is perfect now but at least it is dependable. It meant I could put my focus elsewhere. Now I am concentrating on the mental side. That is why I have improved.”

Harrington believes that you learn far more from losing than winning and he relishes putting his considerable intelligence and his accountant's mind to studying why he has lost a tournament, why others have lost tournaments. “Why is a player on top of the world one week and misses the cut the next week?” he asked.

“Take the case of Tobias Dier, who won the North West of Ireland Open in 2001, the TNT Dutch Open in 2002 and missed almost every cut in between. At the prize giving he was saying he was a bit more accepting of himself that week. I was on the point of saying to him: 'yes but next week you'll go back to doing what you've always done.' I knew it. He knew it. Many players know it but they find it hard not to.” Harrington appears not to find it hard, or at least gives the

impression that he does not find it hard. He emphasises how important it is not to be sucked into believing the adulation of others.

“At the Barclays Singapore Open last November I finished second, and received lots of compliments. But when I thought about it I realised I'd had a four-foot putt to get into a play-off. There was no adrenalin in me, no intensity. The simple answer is I was so upset I had got a bad break earlier in the round that I was feeling sorry for myself. I got out of my routine, out of my zone and I choked.”

Each year Harrington writes down his goals in his diary, showing them only to Caroline. “They might be: make the cut in every event he competes in,” Caroline said. “Or it might be ‘win all four major championships', which is obviously highly unlikely. They are very private but many of them are realistic. He always has to be striving for something.” He also summarises key points from Rotella's book Golf is Not a Game of Perfect, noting them down on a sheet of foolscap paper that he takes everywhere. “That way I can read it in ten minutes,” he said. “Every week I will have something I am trying to work on from that sheet of paper. This week in Abu Dhabi, because it was the first tournament of the year I wouldn't be as prepared as I would want to be so I am reminding myself to be a little easier on myself.

“Golfers play better when they are distracted. This is a Bob Rotella thing, try a little less. That is the hardest thing for every player out here. I know I am going to give it 100 per cent, I don't need to give it 110 per cent.”

Observe Harrington and you realise that he always seems to have time.

“Padraig can sometimes take five minutes to answer a question, not because he hasn't heard the question but because he wants to think about what to say,” Caroline said.

Bringing that same approach to making decisions means he makes them only after he has given them thought and once made, he rarely changes them. Adrian Mitchell has been his manager since 1995. Kartel has supplied his golf shirts and trousers since that date. He has used Wilson equipment since 1998, the same time he started working with Torrance. In a sport where caddies are hired, fired and hired again within weeks, Harrington has had only three in 14 years as a pro.

“Paddy is relentlessly dedicated,” David Howell, his team-mate in the 2004 and 2006 Ryder Cups, said. “A lot of us struggle to give it as much as he does. We try to and discover that we can't.” Murray added: “For Padraig, the road stretches out in front of him and he goes down it. He has never once diverted.”