Darren Clarke: 'Winning the Open is all I've ever wanted'

“I’m very fortunate my name is on the Claret Jug,” Darren Clarke says as he leans back in his chair and sips on his latte.

We’re at Machrihanish Dunes on Scotland’s Kintyre peninsula. We’re both tired. Clarke is suffering from jetlag having barely arrived back at his home in Portrush from Japan, where he was playing in a Champions Tour event, before he was whisked the few miles over the Irish Sea by helicopter. I decide not to complain about my eight-hour drive from my home in Yorkshire.

Clarke must have taken part in a thousand interviews about his Open win in the years that have passed since he held off the American juggernauts Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson at Royal St George’s in 2011, but he reminisces with that same glint in his eye like it was yesterday.

Perhaps fortunate is the right word. Clarke had more than his fair share of major top 10s during his career purple patch between 1997 and 2001, but never again came close until a decade later. Historically, Clarke wasn’t exactly a shock winner of golf’s oldest major and it certainly wasn’t on the same level as Todd Hamilton or Ben Curtis, but at the time no one gave him a chance.

But there was something about the way he was that week in Kent, almost at peace with himself, I suggest.

“I was,” he confirms. “I’d won a couple of months before and I played really well. The previous week at the Scottish Open I’d hit the ball fantastic for the first couple of days, so I went down to St George’s knowing I was hitting it great but I wasn’t making any putts at all, which was frustrating.

“I played practice rounds with Rory [McIlroy] and Lee [Westwood] and on the greens I was just picking up. On the Wednesday I saw [renowned psychologist] Bob Rotella and he said, ‘Right Darren, just start hitting some putts with your lob wedge.’ All of a sudden my mind cleared and that was it. I was on the range hitting draws and fades with the driver off the deck so I knew my swing was pretty good.

“But that doesn’t make any difference unless your head is in the right place. I became very serene and very calm with what I was doing. I was exactly the same way when I won my WGCs, nothing was going to bother me. Rotella told me: ‘Darren, if you’re unflappable then you’re unstoppable.’”

There is an infamous photograph of Clarke in his press conference the day after his Open win where he is, to put it politely, a bit the worse for wear. And who would begrudge him the celebration to end all celebrations. This was, after all, the one he craved, and at a time when he thought his chance had long gone.

“I didn’t go to bed,” he admits, confirming what we already suspected. “But I never drank anything out of the Claret Jug while it was in my possession. I just had too much respect to drink anything out of it. I drank lots of stuff sitting around it, but never anything out of it.

“If I could pick one of out of all of them, I would pick the Open. It’s the oldest, the biggest, and the best. And I would like to have won more of them.

“It was always my best shot because of my affinity with links golf, playing in Ireland, playing all the great links golf courses.

“My first US Open was 1994 at Oakmont. That opened the eyes to that type of golf and I didn’t really think that that was going to fit me. It required an awful lot of patience, with which I was never gifted an awful lot. At the PGA [Championship] I had chances as they were set up more like a regular tournament, and I used to love Augusta and I had chances to win there.”

So what was going through his mind as he walked down 18, knowing he was about to finally lift the trophy he’d spent his entire life dreaming of getting his hands on?

“It’s going to be a long night,” he jokes.

“No, I don’t know. I hit a really nice drive down the fairway and there was an out of bounds stake about 30 yards over the back of the green. I picked that as my target and hit my 5-iron. I pured it and it never left this white post from about 200 yards. As soon as I hit it I knew it was tournament over, it was done. That was the percentage play with the lead that I had.

“Then I was thinking – how many putts have I got to win? I was trying to figure it out – four, five, six, whatever, and I couldn’t quite come to the right number of putts I had. About 20 yards from the green I said to myself: ‘You have enough putts just don’t worry about it.’

“Walking up there I had a sense of this is all I’ve ever wanted to do. This is the one that I wanted more than anything else.”

Since his victory, Clarke’s biggest contribution to the Open is being heavily involved in getting it back to his home course of Royal Portrush for the first time since 1951.

“It took a lot of commitment and bravery from Peter Dawson from the R&A, Arlene Foster, our first minister at the time, and Wilma Erskine, the secretary at Portrush,” he explains. “They worked tirelessly to make it happen.

“They had a little bit of Rory, G-Mac and myself chirping at them to take it on. The R&A came over and watched how successful the Irish Open was at Portrush in 2012 and I think that swayed them to make a commitment to bring it over.

“If you take a look at where Northern Ireland was 20 years ago to where it is now it’s a completely different country. Twenty years ago, to host the Open Championship at Royal Portrush, you would have said, ‘No way, don’t be ridiculous, you should be committed if you think it’s going to be there!’”

Darren Clarke’s Open record

1991: T64
1992: MC
1993: T39
1994: T38
1995: T31
1996: T11
1997: T2
1998: MC
1999: T30
2000: T7
2001: T3
2002: T37
2003: T59
2004: T11
2005: T15
2006: MC
2007: MC
2008: DNP
2009: T52
2010: T44
2011: 1
2012: MC
2013: T21
2014: T26
2015: MC
2016: T30
2017: MC
2018: MC
2019: MC

How would you like to be part of Open history?

The R&A has announced details of how you can get tickets for the historic 150th Open Championship at St Andrews in 2022. Click here to find out more.

The best to never win a major?

It’s the ultimate question golf fans ask each other over a pint in the pub: Who is the best player to never win a major?

For many years Clarke’s name was high on the list, but now he’s no longer eligible who would he put at the top?

“Lee Westwood, without a doubt,” he replies before the question has finished leaving my mouth and I feign surprise.

“The way he has played, his ball striking and everything over the years. He had a couple of chances where Phil [Mickelson] hit miraculous shots at Augusta [to win the 2010 Masters where Westwood finished second] and at Turnberry, when Tom Watson was beaten by Stewart Cink, Lee played great and hit it into that bunker on 18, hit a great shot onto the green thinking he had it going and then three putted.

“He had his chances but it just didn’t quite go his way.”

Will he ever win one?

“Never say never,” comes the reply with a knowing grin.

Clarke on Machrihanish Dunes

After our chat we headed out for 18 holes over the stunning Machrihanish Dunes, David McLay Kidd’s 2009 masterpiece set adjacent to the 143-year-old Machrihanish Golf Club.

Like me, Clarke was playing the Dunes for the first time, so when better to pick his brains than over a pint of Dublin’s finest stout?

“If you want to play proper links golf that isn’t manicured but the greens are immaculate, then this is perfect,” he says.

Indeed, fairways are mown but they’re largely untouched because on this SSSI site the use of fertiliser and the instillation of drainage and irrigation systems are forbidden. That makes it a golf experience in as natural a setting as you can imagine.

“The way the golf course is shaped into the the natural land is wonderful,” Clarke adds. “This is golf as it was intended to be played hundreds of years ago.”