“Things could suddenly turn round,” he said a tad doubtfully, “but there was one big difference between last year and this. Then, I’d got a win under my belt. This year, there’s been nothing. My golf has been rubbish. Utter rubbish.”
Chubby Chandler, Clarke’s manager of 21 years, made the perfect assessment of his player’s situation at the end of 2011. “Darren,” said Chandler, “had a good period of celebration after his triumph and that was entirely understandable. But there’s no getting away from the fact that it affected his golf a bit.”
Chandler decided that the best course of action was to set up a meeting between the now 43-year-old Clarke and Steve McGregor, Lee Westwood’s fitness coach. “I felt that Steve could talk to him about the difference it would make if he started to go in for some serious training, not just for his immediate future but for the plans he has for the Senior Tour,” Chandler said. (Clarke’s Open win will pave the way for a five-year exemption on the US senior circuit when he turns 50.)
McGregor wasted no time referring Clarke to his opposite numbers in Northern Ireland, Jonny Bloomfield and Professor Eric Wallace and, in a matter of weeks, Clarke was more like his former buoyant self. He was shedding pounds and sticking to a number of new rules, with no alcohol in a tournament week among them. “Jonny,” he noted at the time, “doesn’t let me away with anything.”
By early February, Clarke was reporting back that he was feeling stronger and mentally fresher towards the end of the round, while the progress was reflected in his scoring when he had two sub-70 scores over the weekend at Doral, a WGC event where there is no cut.
Alas, the improvements in his play were not on-going. He was working as hard as ever – Clarke is considered in the same league as Vijay Singh when it comes to graft – but his growing anxiety was hardly helping his cause. He sacked his caddie, John Mulrooney, at the end of January in the hope that that would make a difference but, once again, there were no dramatic after-effects.
