Gearing up for the start of a rough ride

TPC of Europe: Philip Reid reports from Heidelberg, where Darren Clarke starts a summer of intense tournament play

The practice ground at the Golf Club St Leon-Rot has acres of space but is dominated by huge, unsightly pylons with electric wires crossing from one corner of the range to the other.

Seemingly oblivious to such aesthetics, Darren Clarke - back to work, with his latest toy, a three-wheeled trike measuring 15-feet long and six-feet wide at the back tucked away in the garage of his Surrey home - is belting ball after ball towards the bottom of the field while occasionally stopping to chat to the man beside him, the British Open champion Ben Curtis.

This week's Deutsche Bank TPC of Europe and next week's Volvo PGA are important events for Clarke, and the 35-year-old's presence in the field of both tournaments confirms his commitment to a tour that has been his home since he turned professional at the tail end of 1990 as a plus-four handicapper.

Indeed, Clarke, a member of the players' committee, is somewhat taken aback by the furore over their decision to insist that potential members of Europe's Ryder Cup team must be members of the European Tour (and play in a minimum 11 tournaments) in order to be eligible to play in the match at Oakland Hills in Detroit next September. As far as he's concerned, all they've done is clarify something that has always been in the rulebook.

"Look, the requirement is that to be a member of the European Tour you have to play in 11 tournaments, and if you want to play in the Ryder Cup you have to be a member of the European Tour . . . even if people wanted to change it, you can't, that's the rule. You can't go off and change the qualifying system in mid stream. You've always had to be a member of the European Tour, and that's the way it is . . . that's always been the criteria and there is no way around that.

"For the couple of people that aren't in the majors and the world championship events then it is very difficult to do, (but) it just depends on where you want to play your tour . . . if you want to play in America, it is difficult to squeeze everything in. My personal opinion is that you've got to be a member of the European Tour.

"You've got to play over here to play on the Ryder Cup team. It is Europe against America and, as the rule stands at the moment, it cannot be changed. There are a lot of big sponsors putting a lot of money into tournaments over here now and we need the support from the guys at the top end of it and you see the majority of players doing it.

"The lure to play in the United States is huge. It would have been very easy for me to go to America and I put serious thought into it because of everything, the convenience, the rewards for playing, everything.

"That's not to detract from the European Tour but the way the US Tour is going, it is growing and growing and growing all the time and it is going to be very difficult in the future to try and keep hold of our young Europeans to stay in Europe. It is going to have to be something that will have to be addressed at some time in the future but, at the moment, that's the rule and that's what we have to uphold."

From that point of view, Sergio Garcia's win in the Byron Nelson on the US Tour couldn't have been better timed.

"The system was changed to give an opportunity to guys playing around the world to win points and that window is there for them . . . it's good to see Sergio win again and get his confidence back up. I'm sure he will be an integral part of the team. Sometimes he doesn't come over in the best light but he has worked hard and it is his desire that makes him so determined," said Clarke, who this year is also a full member on the US Tour where he is required to play a minimum 15 times.

Clarke returns to the circuit this week for a tournament that has a purse of 3 million and which is effectively the start of a summer of intense tournament play that will see him play next week's Volvo PGA followed by a week off and then playing the Buick Classic in Westchester and the US Open followed by another week off before playing for four straight weeks, a sequence that takes in the Smurfit European Open, the Scottish Open, the British Open and the Nissan Irish Open.

His time away from tournament play last week was spent working on his game at the Queensway club near Sunngindale, going to a Sting concert in the Royal Albert Hall while also savouring the second delivery of his trike - when the machine was first delivered on December 23rd, his first action was to drive it into the side of his house.

"Within 40 minutes, it was being put back onto the trailer that had brought it," explained Clarke.

If discovering the joys of the machine second time round was "a bit of fun", Clarke, who now believes that his weight has stabilised at 15st 5lb, is back to more serious business this week. Yesterday, he was out on the course for a practice round at 7.30 a.m. - with just new caddie Pete Coleman as company - and he believes that it will be "a much more difficult challenge than when the event was last played here" in 2002, when Tiger Woods successfully defended his title.

"I like the golf course, but the rough is unbelievably thick. I went in a couple of times and you could just get it out with a sand wedge or a lob wedge. It is going to test every part of your game this week, and I am looking forward to that."