Clarke has Tiger by the tail

There cannot be many people who can boast a 100% matchplay record against Tiger Woods, but Darren Clarke is a more than worthy member of that exclusive club.

Admittedly there have only been two meetings between the pair, but each has been a match of huge importance, and each time Clarke has deservedly come out on top.

The first came three years ago in the Ryder Cup at Brookline, when Clarke teamed up with his great friend and stablemate Lee Westwood against Woods and David Duval in the first day’s fourballs.

Sent out last of the four matches and with two wins and a half already secured by the other European pairs, all eyes were on the final match that would decide if Europe held a 6-2 or 5-3 lead.

And things could not have been closer as the European pair, up against the top two ranked players in the world and a notoriously hostile crowd, held their nerves superbly to seal a one hole victory on the 18th green.

A few months later Clarke and Woods crossed swords again in the final of the Andersen Consulting World Matchplay event in California, a 36-hole showdown at the end of an exhausting week.

Woods was the undoubted favourite that remarkable day in February at the start of a year in which he would win seemingly every event he entered, including an extraordinary hat-trick of major titles in the US Open at Pebble Beach, by a record margin, the Open at St Andrews, by another record margin, and successfully defended his USPGA Championship just for good measure.

Having ironically defeated Woods’ fourball partner Duval in the semi-finals, surely Clarke could not reproduce the same form in the final, the 36 holes bound to be a telling factor against the fittest golfer in the world for a player of Clarke’s, shall we say, more laid-back approach to physical conditioning.

How wrong could you get. Clarke produced a performance of stunning, sustained brilliance of the type only Woods himself had previously appeared capable of, a performance what’s more, achieved in typical laid-back Clarke style.

The enduring image was of the Ulsterman sitting nonchalantly on his bag beside the putting green, puffing on one of his famous huge cigars just minutes before beginning the final showdown.

He waved off coach Butch Harmon – the coach whom of course he shares with Woods – before strolling to the first tee saying, “Never mind, I’m hitting it perfect.”

Between rounds, he shunned a tune-up at the range because he didn’t want to walk back up a steep hill.

“To be honest with you, Darren just flat outplayed me,” Woods recalled recently with admirable candour. “He hit the ball beautifully, missed only one fairway and made a lot of putts. I just wasn’t able to put pressure on him.”

Harmon was equally complimentary, perhaps because he knew only too well how Clarke’s notoriously fragile temperament had been held in check over the whole week and not just during the final.

“I saw a Darren Clarke I hadn’t seen before that day,” Harmon noted. “In 33 holes, he missed one fairway. He looked Tiger Woods in the eye and said ’I’m gonna kick your butt,’ then went out and did it – the same way Tiger’s been doing it to everybody else.”

It was a display that one Irish journalist described as the best by one of his countrymen since Fred Daly’s Open championship triumph at Royal Liverpool in 1947 and ironically Clarke came close to matching Daly’s win a few miles down the road at Royal Lytham last year.

The 33-year-old recovered from a double bogey on the very first hole on Thursday and was eventual winner David Duval’s closest challenger on the final day until an unfortunate double bogey on the 17th on Sunday cost him outright second place.

But there were no complaints from Clarke who knew he had played well enough to win and perhaps more importantly, had kept his sometimes fragile temperament under control in the face of all the obstacles and bad luck that Lytham’s unforgiving links could throw at him.

“I proved to myself that I can play under that sort of pressure around the back nine,” in a major championship Clarke said. “Mentally it was very very good and I was very much in control of what I was trying to do.”

That is a sentiment that is not heard often enough however and Clarke admitted at the recent Wales Open that, “I am my own worst enemy at times,” when things are not going his way.

He did get the mental approach spot on when he won the English Open earlier this year for the third time in four years, and it will need to be again when the delayed 34th Ryder Cup matches finally begin at the Belfry.

For Clarke will either have to be the strong link in his normal partnership with a struggling Westwood, or will have to form a new pairing, possibly with one of the European team’s four rookies.

And whether or not he and Westwood play twice on the opening two days either way remains to be seen, with many observers feeling that fatigue was a factor in their singles defeats in the first two matches on Sunday, Westwood losing three and two to Tom Lehman in the opening game and Clarke going down four and two to Hal Sutton.

What is certain though, is that Clarke has the talent to beat anyone in the world on his day, and if he can reproduce that form when it matters most, Europe will have a major weapon firing on all cylinders come the Belfry.