World is Clarke's oyster again

GOLF:EVEN AT 42, it is possible to have life-changing experiences. Certainly, as Darren Clarke yesterday morning returned to Royal St George's Golf Club with the Claret Jug in close proximity, afraid to leave it out of his sight, the full consequences of achieving a lifetime's ambition were still soaking in: firstly, as a newly-crowned Major champion, doors recently closed to him will re-open; and, secondly, the commercial world will again heighten its interest.

As his manager, Chubby Chandler, of International Sports Management, put it: “Darren’s already a brand, he is massively popular all over the world. The United States. Japan. South Africa. So I think my job for him is going to be very easy. The phone will never stop ringing but it will be a different sort of phone call than Rory (McIlroy) gets, a different set of sponsors. The great thing about Darren is that he has got room for a few sponsors, he doesn’t have quite as many logos as anyone else.”

For sure, Clarke’s win in this 140th staging of the British Open proved to be immensely popular and, for a player who was contemplating seeking a captain’s role in future Ryder Cups, victory has only served to make him more determined to return as a player. Unfortunately for him, this €1 million win doesn’t count towards qualifying for next year’s event in Chicago as that qualifying campaign only gets under way in September.

What the win does for the Ulsterman is to bring him back into the mainstream fold in a bigger way than ever: Clarke has gained an exemption into the British Open until the age of 60 (taking him up to the 2029 championship); he earned five-year exemptions into the US Masters, the US Open and the US PGA and, also, earned a place in the up-coming WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron and to the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in China later this season.

This is a win that changes everything for Clarke in terms of how he can map out his tour itinerary. “He has really missed the last two years playing on the same schedule as Rory, Lee (Westwood), G-Mac, those sort of people. He has been playing in Morocco, Sicily, etc, and, suddenly, his schedule is going to be similar to all the other guys,” said Chandler, who ruled out the prospect of Clarke taking up US PGA Tour membership.

“I can’t see him joining them (on the US Tour) and playing 15 tournaments. What he will do is enjoy playing his 10 and 11 and 12 (tournament invites) that he is allowed to. He will feel he is back to where he should be,” claimed Chandler, who signed Clarke as his first player when he established ISM some 21 years ago.

Chandler continued: “He’s worked very, very hard for this. It’s been a long road and we’ve had some dark phone calls. There were a lot of times when you’d take a phone call and you just knew that it wasn’t a very good call . . . he lost about five or six years of his career. The psychologist Mike Finnigan gave him something which basically said, ‘prove everybody wrong’ and he’s been doing that.”

In one extraordinary win, Clarke has changed the direction of his career which had seemed to be moving increasingly towards a mainly European Tour schedule and only occasional forays into the Majors. For instance, his last appearance in the US Masters was in 2007 and he has only played in two of the last seven US Opens. Now, he has opened a gateway back into those championships.

And the hunger, as he proved over the links here at Sandwich, is very much there. “I think I’m definitely a better player now than I was 10 years ago. I definitely appreciate an awful lot more what I’ve achieved now than what I did then. Ten years ago, I took an awful lot of things for granted as a professional golfer.

“I played well and I won this and I achieved this and blah, blah, blah. But definitely I’m much more appreciative of what sponsors do, of what players do, of everything that goes along with a tournament.

“For all my golfing career, to get my name on (the Claret Jug), it means more than anything . . . I’ll be fortunate that it will benefit me hugely financially, but it’s more to have my name on there which is the important thing.”

Clarke’s immediate itinerary – once he has the party to end all parties in Portrush and Dungannon this coming week – will see him return to competitive action at next week’s Irish Open at Killarney. He will then fly to Akron for the Bridgestone Invitational (a WGC tournament he won previously when it was named the NEC Invitational) and, then, he will head on down to Atlanta for the US PGA, the final major of the season.

Having started the championship ranked 111th in the world, Clarke’s win propelled him up to 30th in the latest rankings – with McIlroy ranked fourth and McDowell at 11th – in a giant leap. The player’s immediate thoughts switch to Killarney and then the States, but down the line there is an abiding ambition to again feature as a player in the Ryder Cup.

A hero of the event when it was staged at The K Club in 2006, Clarke was overlooked for one of captain Nick Faldo’s “wild card” picks in 2008 and was an assistant to Colin Montgomerie when it was held at Celtic Manor last year. With Jose Maria Olazabal captaining the team next year and Clarke an avowed critic of the course at Gleneagles in 2014, it may be that his chance will come when the event returns to the USA in 2016.

“I think at some stage if I get the opportunity to be Ryder Cup captain, possibly I may have a little bit more respect from players having been a Major champion. As to when that will be, it’s down to the committee if and when they ask me to be captain. When I’m possibly going to be captain, I don’t know. It may or may not put my aspirations back a little bit, a couple of years from when I thought I may have been the captain. So we shall see and see what the committee, when their thinking is it’s best for me to be captain, if they ask me.”

Before all that, there is a lot of more golf to be played by the reinvigorated Clarke. And, after his performance in Sandwich, you wouldn’t bet against this being the start of another chapter in his golfing career.