LAST year Padraig Harrington crossed a line.

Winning the European order of merit title ticked a box that badly needed ticking.

He wasn't going to walk away from the tour that had nurtured him or anything like that, but he felt the time was right to move on. And hopefully up.

Invariably coy about revealing his goals in the past, most conversations on the subject of the major championships would have involved much linguistic gymnastics.

Today, there is more clarity.

His season will be judged, he says, primarily on how he performs at the majors.

"Five or six years ago I was hopeful that I'd turn up and play well, emphasis on the hope, whereas now it's not nearly so hit-and-miss. I felt I needed to get lucky, maybe to have an unbelievable week on the greens, but now I feel I can play my game, play within myself, and be there or thereabouts.

"Obviously, you're not going to win a major without getting a break or two, but I don't feel I need to be out on a limb to compete. I'm not saying that a few years ago I wasn't trying to win a major, it's just that it's a different focus now."

The painful lessons of the 2002 British Open at Muirfield, where a par at the finishing hole would have got him into a play-off, and of last year at Winged Foot, where three closing pars would have won him the US Open, have been absorbed.

Even if Harrington is not yet qualified to insist that he has the mental right stuff to win one of golf 's four most prestigious events, he clearly has the game. "I know from Muirfield and Winged Foot that I'm capable of winning a major, " he says.

To that end, America has been calling and, including this weekend's Houston Open, he has already played in six tournaments on the PGA Tour so far this season.

There was a top-10 finish in Los Angeles where he kicked off with a 63 before slipping back, and more recently a couple of top-20s at the Honda Classic and the CA Championship. One eye on competing, the other on Augusta.

"I've improved my game a lot over the years, and I feel I'm up to the challenge posed by the US Open and the British Open, but the Masters is probably the one tournament which has given me the incentive to continue to improve.

"It asks some extra questions, it's pushing me on. You could say that everything I do with my golf swing is to help me play Augusta better.

Full stop."

Tomorrow he makes the journey from Houston believing, but not expecting. On the face of it, his Masters record of one top-10 finish in seven appearances is nothing to shout about, however, last year he felt he played well and wound up tied for 27th, while in other years he has finished higher and played much worse.

That is the conundrum of Augusta.

As Phil Mickelson was celebrating his second green jacket, Harrington didn't have to dig too deep to uncover the reason behind his modest placing. Despite all its trials and tribulations, Augusta is not a course that rewards the defensive player, and more often than not, the opportunity to press comes at the par fives. Because he was so accurate and so long off the tee all week, Harrington had plenty of opportunities.

Of the 16 times he played the par-fives, he found himself in range with his second shot 15 times. So perfect were almost all of his drives that there was never any question of laying up. With a five wood, a three iron or a four iron his hand, he went for the green every time, and virtually every time he found trouble.

"If you're just slightly out with those sort of shots, you can wind up in a bad place. I actually didn't hit any really bad shots, but plenty of them went in the water."

He ended up playing those par fives in a damning total of three over par whereas Mickelson laid the foundation for his victory by playing them in 13 under. The 16-stroke difference on Augusta's scoring holes made the 11-stroke margin between the champion's winning total and Harrington's 27th place all the more frustrating.

"I now realise that on the par fives the tee shot is not necessarily the be all and end all, " he explains. "I will take those second shots on again, and commit to them, because I'm not going to win the Masters playing safe, but I have to improve my ability to hit them in the right place. You just have to be spot on. It's not a question of hitting high, soft fades into the greens, the ball simply has to be struck better."

The more he wrestles with the course's particular brand of risk and reward, the more he is convinced that the Masters is the hardest tournament to win. Essentially, you learn that hitting it straight at the US Open and the USPGA Championship and, dealing with the wind at the British Open, tend to pay off, but every part of a player's game is exposed at Augusta.

"You've got to hit it straight, you have to cope with the breeze, you've got to strike it properly and you've got to land it in the right place.

Everything is on the edge, and because there's a level of tension that's not matched by any other tournament, sometimes players are more paralysed than energised by it.

"I mean, you watch a player hitting it in the water on 11, 12 or 13, and you hear a commentator saying, 'He didn't have it there, ' but you're being asked to hit so many intimidating shots that one can go wrong very easily."

So, can he win? Because he is coming off a run of tournaments in which he has performed solidly but not spectacularly, the customary view of Harrington is that he poses the biggest threat when expectation is not too high.

But this is Augusta where, with the exception of Tiger Woods's installation as favourite, all bets are off.

"It's true, I've never been in contention at the Masters, and in all likelihood I'll have to go through what I went through at the British Open and the US Open. You hear people saying that usually you've got to lose tournaments before you win, but then sometimes you have to skip that. If the chance is there I can take it. I've got to convince myself that I don't have to earn it."

And has he ever visualised himself walking up Augusta's 18th fairway with a lead?

"Well, if I'm in contention, I'll certainly be thinking about it.

It's not a bad thing to do at all.

I think it might have been Seve Ballesteros who said that when he won the Masters he didn't really enjoy it that much because he'd seen himself do it so often in his mind's eye."

Padraig Harrington's 35, and entering the phase of his career when he is most likely to win that elusive major.

He has upped the ante and raised expectations, but this week is all about inner calm.

"I'll be trying to stay focused, not to get overwhelmed by the course and the pressure.

I'll be concentrating on doing my own thing over and over again. Augusta's an exciting place, so you try not to let it be exciting."

Unless, that is, you are walking up the 18th fairway next Sunday with a lead.