Hungover hero Clarke arrives home

Golfing hero Darren Clarke returned home today to deliver the game’s biggest prize to his two sons – the Open Championship trophy.

Weary and hungover after a night of partying, he produced the famous claret jug to his wide-eyed boys Tyrone, 12, and Conor, 10, and then declared: “There, that is for you.”

Clarke, 42, whose wife Heather died of cancer in 2006, then sat back and relaxed at his home overlooking the links of Royal Portrush golf course on the north coast, where a new round of celebrations are planned to mark his sensational victory at Royal St Georges, in Sandwich, Kent, England.

He is the third player from Northern Ireland to win a major title in just over a year – heightening pressure on golf’s ruling body to bring the Open Championship back to Portrush, where it was played the one and only time in 1951.

R&A officials based at St Andrews, Scotland, are due to review the course, one of the world’s finest, as well as the local infrastructure later this year. Although it is unlikely there will be any commitment, it emerged today that Portrush is in the running to stage the Irish Open.

Clarke’s victory came just weeks after his friend Rory McIlroy triumphed at the US Open, a title which Graeme McDowell, also from Portrush, won last year at Pebble Beach.

Suddenly Northern Ireland has become a golfing capital with tourism chiefs planning to launch a new advertising offensive, especially in the United States, in a bid to cash in on an extraordinary run of success.

Clarke’s two boys watched his win on television at home with his sister, mother-of-two Andrea Jennings, and rushed to embrace him when he returned home after flying into George Best Belfast City Airport on a private jet with his fiancee Alison Campbell, his father Godfrey and mother Hettie.

Before getting the flight back to Northern Ireland, he revealed he did not go to bed after his win.

Bleary-eyed and slurring his words, he said: “I had quite a few pints and quite a few glasses of red wine and it all continued until about 30 minutes ago. It has been a very good night.”

Nothing, though, had been poured into the trophy.

“I’m a little bit of a traditionalist. I feel a bit funny about putting stuff in the claret jug that should not be in there,” he said.

“There’s nothing in it as yet. That may not be the case as the week goes by. I have 294 (text) messages and the writing is far too small for me to look at them in this state, so I may look at them tomorrow at some stage and figure them out.”

He said he appreciated the victory a lot more now.

“Ten years ago I did take an awful lot of things for granted.”

He added: “It is much easier to perform well with a smile on your face than a scowl on your face.”