Darren Clarke, of Portrush, Northern Ireland, was the winner of the 140th edition of the Open Championship last week at Royal St. George”s in Sandwich. In what started out as the year of the journeyman has now gravitated to a journeyman-athon with Clarke”s totally unexpected victory over a world class field in the game”s oldest major championship. Clarke channeled the spirit of 40-something Tom Kite at Pebble Beach in 1992 to overcome the treachery of Royal St. George”s, the coastal rains and the winds of change to capture the 2011 British Open title.
True, it is statistically baffling to think that three of the last grand slam champions are from Northern Ireland (Clarke, Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy). On top of that, five of the last six major winners have the same management firm headed up by Chubby Chandler, a larger-than-life figure. Finally, it remains statistically amazing that with 75 percent of the majors contested on American soil coupled with 40 percent of the world”s top 100 being Americans, the last American to win a major title was Phil Mickelson at the 2009 Masters.
Yet from outside the realm of the world”s top 100 came our latest champion golfer of the year. As popular a win as was Clarke”s this past Sunday, it was totally and thoroughly unexpected. There was no reason to believe that Clarke, a 42-year-old European Tour journeyman on the downside of his career, could stay anywhere around the leader board at the British Open during the final two rounds. After all, Clarke had last contended in a major championship some 10 years ago. He wasn”t even in the field at this year”s Masters and U.S. Open. A former top-10 golfer in the world rankings who shot down Tiger Woods in the 2000 World Match Play finals, Clarke was far removed from the prime of his career. And yet, he is now the holder of the Claret Jug.
Clarke was born in August 1968 in Dungannon, Northern Ireland. He took to the game of golf at a young age and was part of an active youth group hosted by the Dungannon Golf Club. Three other boys from the Dungannon junior section (Alistair Caldwell, Barry Hamill and Gary Champbers) all grew up to become golf pros.
Clarke had an active amateur career in the late 1980s. He came to America for a short period of time and played collegiate golf at Wake Forest in 1987. In 1989 he won the East of Ireland Championship and had a breakthrough year in 1990 when he won the Spanish Amateur, the Irish Amateur and the South of Ireland Championship. As a footnote, this columnist was a distant also-ran in the 1990 South of Ireland that year at Lahinch.
Clarke turned professional at the end of 1990 and started playing on the European Tour in 1991. He won an unofficial professional tournament in 1992, the Ulster Professional Tournament in Northern Ireland. Clarke”s first Euro Tour win came one year later, and it was a most impressive start as he defeated Nick Faldo and Vijay Singh by two strokes to win the Alfred Dunhill Open at historic St. Andrews. He picked up a second win three years later, holding off Mark Davis to capture the German Masters in October 1996.
From 1998 to 2003, Clarke was one of the world”s top 10 golfers. He won the Benson & Hedges Open and the Volvo Masters in 1998. He captured the English Open in 1999. Clarke showed his talent as well as toughness by defeating Woods in the World Match Play in February 2000 and then successfully defended his English Open title later that June. Then, 2001 was another successful year with globetrotting victories on the Sunshine Tour of South Africa, the Japanese Golf Tour and another big Euro Tour win, this time at the prestigious Smurfit European Open. Clarke won a third English Open title in 2002 and won another World Golf Championship when he took home the NEC Invitational title at Firestone in the summer of 2003.
Clarke”s career started to slow down after 2003. He won in Japan in 2004 and 2005, but his family life began to impact his golf life. His wife, Heather, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, and after a period of remission, it returned in 2004. Darren missed a major portion of the next two seasons to care for his dying wife and two young sons. Heather Clarke finally succumbed to cancer and passed away in August 2006 at age 39.
Clarke returned that September to play for the European team at the Ryder Cup Matches. Even with a heavy heart, he was able to win all three of his matches and helped the Euros retain the Cup at Oakland Hills outside Detroit. It was a very emotional time for him, competing on golf”s biggest stage just six weeks after his wife”s death.
Since then, Clarke and his young family have moved back to Portrush in Northern Ireland. Portrush has a great links course that hosted the 1951 Open Championship. Clarke started to play the elder statesman role on tour, mentoring a new generation of Irish golfers such as McDowell and McIlroy. He won the occasional European Tour title, having won the Asian Open and the Dutch Open in 2008. Winless for three years and ranked beyond the world”s top 100, Clarke won the Iberdrola Open title this past May. That win on Mallorca Island off the coast of Spain was good enough to get him into the field at Royal St. George”s.
Last week, Clarke shot 68-68-69-70 at Sandwich for a 5-under-par 275 aggregate. Clarke”s three-stroke margin of victory was totally out of left field. Then again, so were recent major wins by McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Martin Kaymer and Charl Schwartzel. The year of the journeyman continues and Clarke is the champion golfer of 2011.
You just never know until that final putt drops on Sunday afternoon. You just never know when the gods of golf will kindly smile upon you, have that ball jump over a few pot bunkers and nestle close to the flagstick. It was all good for Darren Clarke.
