Chilled out Clarke will give it his best shot

TEN days of chilling out with his wife and family on the exclusive island of Abaco in the Bahamas have helped put Darren Clarke into the most relaxed frame of mind he's ever been in going into a major tournament.

To be able to spend that amount of time with Heather, who was given permission to suspend her latest course of chemotherapy, and sons Tyrone and Conor, proved to Clarke that there are more important things in this world than major golf tournaments.

"She's doing well at the moment," Darren reported.

"Abaco is a fabulously quiet place, we turned the world off, no mobile phones, no nothing. I get out there on my own. There's nobody to bother me at all. It is good therapy for me, it would have been great to be arriving here after having a few more days fishing.

"It's another tournament. If I play well, I play well, if I don't, I don't particularly care. I don't know if it's an advantage for me, it could go one of two ways, it could be fantastic or it could be horrible. I've had just an unbelievable time with Heather and the kids down in Abaco and at the end of the day, that's all that really matters to me at the minute." When I wondered if he'd feel the same at 4 o'clock on Sunday, if he was within a shot or two off the lead in the Masters, Darren was quick to insist: "Don't get me wrong. I'd love to play well and I'd love to play myself into contention. It's just not the way I've been here before. It's just that spending time with them down at the beach and having as good a time as we had, I just sort of said 'you can't beat this'.

"I could probably have done with this in years gone by. I'll tell you on Friday evening. It's totally different preparation. It's taking the intensity away."

Having played the revamped Augusta course with Westwood and Ryder Cup captain Ian Woosnam on Tuesday, Clarke came to the conclusion that it could be anything up to four or five strokes more difficult than 12 months ago. He quipped that "they have a fantastic little new par four and a great new par five." He was referring to the par 3 4th, which now plays to 240 yards, and the par 4 11th, which has been stretched to 505 yards. One of the game's longest and finest strikers, Clarke hit "a little dink of a three wood just over the back left edge of the green at the 4th, which wasn't bad given I hadn't touched a club for a few weeks".

So what does Clarke, who is now actively involved in the golf course architecture business, really make of the change?

"It's difficult and not quite the way I would envisage it, but that's just my opinion. They have certainly toughened it up, whether in a good way or a bad way we shall wait and see. The 11th was ranked the most difficult hole last year and now they've made it even more difficult and some guys will have to use driver to reach the 4th green. It's pushing the boundaries a bit."

As we chatted, there was a light breeze accompanying the early morning chill and he reckoned that "anybody who shot four 70s would be very hard to beat. Eight under is going to be a great score. I could be using driver at 15 of the 18 holes. It could take 25% of the field out of the running, that's the way it would appear to me. Fred Funk hit driver, driver into the 1st. I hit four iron off a good drive and the greens aren't designed to be taking that length of shot. The changes give the longer hitters a distinct advantage. Everybody is going to miss greens so you still have to get it up and down."

This is Clarke's ninth straight Masters. He has had his moments here, leading after a first round 66 in 2003 only to take ten more in the second, after a weather delay meant he had to play 28 holes in the one day. His fitness, or rather the lack of it, found him out and caused him to undertake a fitness regimen that reaped a rich dividend for some time, though the pounds would now appear to be creeping back on. Interestingly, his best overall finish was a tie for eighth in his rookie year of 1998. He shot three under par on that occasion. In 2001, he finished four under in 24th and those were the only two occasions on which he has come in under regulation for the 72 holes.