Tiger, Rory and Dr Bob inspire Clarke

A TEXT from Tiger Woods, a boot up the backside from Rory McIlroy and some sage counselling from Dr Bob Rotella.

These are the things that helped Darren Clarke find the components needed to win a major championship that he had thought had been missing but were, in fact, within him all this time.

Clarke found the formula this weekend at Royal St George’s and it produced the Open Championship he had been craving since his childhood days in Dungannon.

“It’s pretty amazing right now, to tell you the truth,” Clarke said last night. “You know, it’s been a dream since I’ve been a kid to win The Open, like any kid’s dream is, and I’m able to do it, which just feels incredible, incredible right now.”

The 42-year-old had kept his game and his head together over four rounds and a weekend of testing conditions to defeat Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson by three strokes at five under par to take the Claret Jug and a winner’s cheque for €999,540.

“I’ve been playing lovely for a while,” he said. “I got really, really frustrated at Inverness (at the Scottish Open) because I played really nice for the first two days and then played poorly on the Sunday, but came down here, knew I was hitting the ball well, knew it was on links again, and I was excited and looking forward to it.

“That being said, I still wasn’t in the best of humour on Tuesday, but spent a bit of time earlier with Bob Rotella. My golf seems to be if I feel as if I’m putting better, my whole game seems to be better, and that’s what happened to me this week. I didn’t putt fantastic, but I was pretty solid.”

Clarke had shared the halfway lead with 2009 US Open champion Lucas Glover and after Saturday’s third round he was one clear of Johnson but still in need of a morale boost. It came readily, Rory McIlroy getting the ball rolling over dinner at manager Chubby Chandler’s house and then mimicking Clarke’s text before his final round at last month’s US Open to “show them how good you are”.

“It was wonderful last night. I saw Rory, he was at Chubby’s house, and then I got a text from him later on sort of reiterating the text that I had sent to him whenever he was going out to play at Congressional. And then I had a couple of really good messages, texts from Tiger. He was giving me a couple of bits of advice, which was brilliant.”

Rotella returned to the driving range yesterday morning to give a final pep talk but Clarke refused to contemplate that this would be his day until he had walked up the 18th fairway with a four-shot cushion.

“You never really think that up until you’re on the 18th green with a couple of shots ahead. You never know what’s going to happen. A couple of good breaks went my way. Yesterday I played as good as I could play from tee to green and I didn’t really get anything out of it. Today I played okay. I got a couple of good breaks that went my way. Also at the same time hit lots of great putts today which burnt the edges and doesn’t go in. So it sort of balanced out.

“I actually did not take anything for granted until it was on the back edge of the 18th green there. “I’ve got enough shots; 17 I was not going to make anything worse than bogey, you know, trying to play the last two holes pretty smart, and I hit a really good tee shot off the 18th tee right in the middle of the fairway. Anyway, you can’t take anything for granted. It was just one of those things where I was trying to be sensible.”