DAVID Howell feels hard work on the technical aspects of his swing is the way forward after playing ‘terribly’ on the second day of the Turkish Open.

The Swindonian rattled off the final five holes of his first round at the Montgomerie Maxx Royal and then completed a further 18 to reach the halfway point of the Antalya tournament at two-under.

That was enough to place the 38-year-old tied-53rd in the world-class field, but dissatisfied with that, Howell immediately went out on the range to iron out swing problems with coach Jonathan Wallet.

“I played terribly, I was all over the shop so it was very pleasing to get round in 72. It was as bad as I’ve played in a long time,” said Howell.

“Ultimately I’m not swinging the club very well and we know it’s been a great period with the win (at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship), but since then I’ve started to swing the club not quite as well.

“You go through periods where you feel you’re swinging it lovely, but you also get to a point where you have to do some technical work.

“At times out there I didn’t have a clue where the ball was going to go, but my coach (Jonathan Wallet) is here and we think we’ve got our finger on what might be going wrong.

“We’ve got a couple of key things to try. My leg got a bit shoddy and my head was moving about a bit, so I will try and put some of those technical things in place.

“In a perfect world that would allow you to play well straight away but it doesn’t always work that way.”

Howell was due off at 7.45am BST this morning (9.45am local time) with one positive of yesterday being that the Broome Manor pro had recovered from a bug and was unaffected by recent shoulder and chest woes.

“I did feel a bit better and it’s the first round of golf in the last 14 where I’ve felt fine,” he said.

“I was a bit worried about my arm in the morning when I felt it tighten up on the range, but during the afternoon round I was absolutely fine, which was nice.

“We aren’t going to win this week so the job as always is to finish as high as we can.

“I’ll have to play a little bit better over the weekend if I’m going to finish in the top half, and that would be a reasonable effort.”

Tied for the overnight lead on 12-under were Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson, Victor Dubuisson and Justin Walters, with world number one Tiger Woods a further shot back.