Captaincy completes image turnaround for traditionalist Clarke
Living up to his reputation as ’one of the boys’ who likes a drink and a smoke, Clarke had not been to bed when he turned up for a press conference the morning after his famous win at Royal St George’s in 2011.
Yet, despite all the red wine and Guinness which had been consumed, the famous trophy he was still clutching remained proudly unblemished.
“I’m a little bit of a traditionalist. I feel a bit funny about putting stuff in the Claret Jug that shouldn’t be in there,” Clarke said at the time.
Adhering to the game’s traditions also came to the fore at the Irish Open in 2006, when an act of sportsmanship arguably cost him the title.
Clarke held a two-shot lead in the final round at Carton House, but had pushed his drive on the ninth into heavy rough before play was suspended due to darkness.
Returning to the course on Monday morning, Clarke found his ball in a considerably better lie, but insisted on chipping out sideways and ran up a bogey five.
“I could have hit it on to the front of the green, but if I had done I would have held my head in shame walking all the way to the green, so I just decided to chip it out and play it like I would have last night,” Clarke said after eventually finishing third behind Thomas Bjorn, coincidentally one of his rivals for the Ryder Cup captaincy.
Less than three months later, the disappointment of missing out on his national open was put into perspective when Clarke’s first wife Heather died after a long battle with breast cancer.
The Ryder Cup was just six weeks away and Clarke had not qualified for the team, but, after speaking to him in the days that followed Heather’s funeral, captain Ian Woosnam chose him as one of his wild-cards. It proved to be an inspired selection.
The rest of the side wanted to win as much for him as they did for themselves and Clarke, incredibly, won all his three games.
Few can imagine what it was like to receive the ovation he did on the first tee on the first morning, yet he struck a 300-yard drive into the perfect spot, hit his approach to 12 feet and sank the birdie putt.
“The crowd that Friday morning will be something I cherish forever,” he said as Europe’s celebrations started with him inevitably at the heart of them, famously downing a pint of Guinness on the balcony of the team hotel.
“It’s done a lot for me. It’s done a lot for people to show me how much they care about me and how they cared about Heather. That means everything.”
And as for his part in the victory, he added: “I can play sometimes. Not all the time – just now and again.”
Good play has certainly been thin on the ground since his Open triumph, Clarke failing to register a single top-10 finish on the European Tour since lifting the Claret Jug.
It has not been for the lack of trying, with Clarke continuing to work on his game and transforming his physique with extensive work in the gym.
Something of a transformation in his relationship with the media has also been taking place and Clarke enjoyed a high profile on both local and American television at Gleneagles last year.
The Ulsterman has not always been so co-operative, leading one media colleague to compare his attitude to that of 2008 captain Nick Faldo. And everyone knows how that turned out.
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