Chandler believes that Clarke’s best hope of a repeat win is if the weather at Lytham is in the same mischievous league as it was in Kent last year. 
No-one who was there will forget that exhibition of quail-high drives he hit on the practice range in advance of his Sunday starting time. There were 12 of them, with each boring as effectively into the elements as its predecessor.
Clarke claimed afterwards that it was just a drill, one he did every day. But to those of his fellow-leaders who paused to look, the blows served as so many warning shots across the bows.
Chandler and Bob Rotella, the golf psychologist who had some meaningful chats with Clarke at Royal St George's, will doubtless say all the right things to the defending champion before the off on 19 July. However, even they will be thinking that the sound of a rough and roaring wind could do rather more to have the old warrior pricking up his ears.
