In fairness, he and Mulrooney were unlikely to have enjoyed a long and peaceful arrangement in any circumstances. The pair had one of a handful of rows on the Sunday prior to Royal St George’s as Clarke came unstuck in the final round of the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart.
In which connection, the often tempestuous Clarke revealed at the recent annual European Tour awards dinner that he fell out with rather more than merely Mulrooney at that point. His Royal St George’s practice companions – Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell – were similarly targeted. “I wasn’t speaking to anyone,” laughed Clarke of that improbable prelude to the biggest week of his golfing life.
Phil "Wobbly" Morbey, who used to work with Ian Woosnam, took over Clarke’s bag in February, while the Ulsterman’s next positive move was to marry his fiancé, with the ceremony taking place on a beach on the Bahamas.
Clarke says of Alison, a former Miss Northern Ireland, that she knows how to deal with his “strops”. Asked to expand, he said, lightly, that she tended to ignore him.
It was following the PGA Championship at Wentworth, where he was once again redundant at the weekend, that Clarke pulled out of the US Open because of a groin injury which had first made itself felt during the Houston Open.
“I am extremely disappointed,” he said at the time. “The thing is that I have to make sure I am 100 per cent ready for the Open – and to do that I’ve been advised not to play for a month.”
