Golf: Clarke and Westwood in the mood

Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood are two golfing stars worth backing for this week's USPGA Championship if their relaxed moods are anything to go by.

Westwood, not even close to winning a title in the first half of the year, was runner-up to Montgomerie at the Scandinavian Masters in Malmo.

Last season's European number one is more than happy with his current form.

"I'd like to keep playing how I am at the moment. If I do I've got a chance to win every tournament I enter," said Westwood.

"And even if I don't win from now until the end of the year I'll come out of it having learned a lot. You learn a lot more when you are playing poorly than when you are playing well."

Asked what he might learn, the 28-year-old replied: "I'm not going to divulge that, obviously. You like to try to stay a step ahead of everybody, so if you learn something you don't tell anybody."

Clarke was joint third at Lytham and is delighted that the Atlanta Athletic Club is as tough a test as it is because he thinks he has the game for it.

He has just come from practising at an even tougher one - Pine Valley in New Jersey.

"I feel very comfortable at the moment and it's great to see a course where you have to hit driver. It's a refreshing change."

There may be a good omen for the Ulsterman too. He lost to his manager Andrew Chandler, a former European tour player himself, just as he did before winning the world match play championship in California last year - albeit after giving Chandler 10 shots.

The favourite, inevitably, is Tiger Woods, seeking to become the first player to win the title three years in a row since Walter Hagen in the 1920s and the first to win any major hat-trick since Peter Thomson at the Open in 1954-56.

Second favourite, also inevitably following his Open triumph, is David Duval and of those who have not won a major yet equally inevitably the favourite is Phil Mickelson.