A sleepless night with his wife and baby son ill, left Darren Clarke with little chance of achieving his double targets in the British Masters at the Forest of Arden yesterday.

His concentration understandably at a low ebb, the Ulsterman lost any opportunity of pulling off a second victory of the year and taking the lead on Europe's order of merit and had to settle for a share of only 19th place behind winner Colin Montgomerie.

A closing 75, three-over-par, six strokes behind a rejuvenated Montgomerie, who finished one better than Argentine Eduardo Romero and Sweden's Pierre Fulke, earned Clarke just £8,220. This was meagre fair when he was looking at the £125,000 first prize for the first two days.

His finish, with three bogeys in five holes in the middle of the back nine, left him further behind Lee Westwood on the order of merit, too. Westwood pipped him by a stroke and that meant instead of overtaking the Englishman for top placing on the rankings, Clarke slipped £8,000 behind him instead.

What is more, with Montgomerie coming out of a two-month lean spell, Clarke is now only £26,000 in front of the Scot, who made it a second win at Forest of Arden to go with three seconds, at the course he obviously relishes.

There was no hiding Clarke's disappointment as he let things slip but he admitted that sometimes golf was not the thing on his mind after not only spending a sleepless night but also having to run around arranging an earlier flight back to Ireland so the sickness and tummy upset wife and baby were suffering, could be treated.

On the course, an opening bogey, when he overshot the green and then missed a five-foot save, set the tone on his putting fortunes for the day. He also missed a save from 10ft on the short eighth after missing the green and the three bogeys on the back nine were all saveable with more trusty finishing from his putter.

Briefly, it looked as though he might still make a fight of both causes when he took the most difficult holes for birdies, the ninth and 10th, but he could never really trust the putter and in the end it nearly betrayed him inadvertently. On the 18th he missed from six feet and was just about to place the putter in address for the tap-in when his ball moved. After consultation with a referee he was excused the penalty because of not being at complete address. Otherwise, the gap between him and Westwood and Montgomerie last night would have been that much wider and nearer. "Obviously I had a lot playing on my mind and that was always going to cost me a lot of concentration," Clarke admitted. "But the reason why I finished where I did was really down to the fact that I missed eight putts of between eight and 10ft again today. That made it 15 altogether at the weekend.

"It's a great disappointment to finish like that because I played really well again today, just as I did all week, but got nothing on the greens.

"As far as the order of merit goes, it's not over yet. I'm not playing the Lancome Trophy this week but there's a lot of big money to be won over the last three events. It's still very tight at the top."

Today he will meet up with Montgomerie and a whole bevy of European players, including Jose Maria Olazabal and Ian Woosnam, to play in the Omagh Memorial Fund Pro-Am at Portmarnock Links.

Over £300,000 looks likely to be raised from the even, with £258,000 already promised from the 27 teams taking part. In fact, another 27 teams are waiting in the wings in the forlorn hope of playing, so the amount could have been doubled.

Billy Andrade won the Canadian Open yesterday by purposely playing into a bunker to save par and beat overnight leader Bob Friend on the first hole of a playoff.

Andrade had a one-stroke lead over Friend at the 18th and for the second straight day shot his drive into the water. He eventually made par but Friend got the birdie he needed to took the tournament to a play-off, both heading back to the 18th tee.

This time Andrade laid up and as Friend attempted the green, only to overshoot into the water, Andrade played into the bunker and then sandwedged to a five-foot par putt and victory. He finished on 13-under 275 for a $396,000 cheque.