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Leave Darren Clarke alone!

The winner of the British Open is entitled to do it his way – including the celebrations afterwards. Plus: the illusion of the Confessional comes under close scrutiny.

Niall Stokes, 22 Aug 2011

My my, hey hey. Go away for a few days and you can miss a whole shitstorm. Maybe you’re better off that way. Our new fangled prissiness has reached such epidemic proportions that it really is very hard to abide.

Take the controversy that erupted last week about Darren Clarke. The Dungannon-born golfer had just powered his way to a brilliant and emotionally charged victory in the British Open. It was, at the age of 42, the finest achievement in a wonderful professional career. In the aftermath, Darren partied into the wee small hours and beyond. He did a few interviews where he was not at the top of his verbal game. And in response, a load of sanctimonious gits thought fit to denigrate him.

What a load of shit.

In the cold light of day, Darren himself might feel that he’d have been better off to have had a decent night’s sleep after his extraordinary win. But this was a never to be repeated moment and he was entitled to go with the flow. He stayed up all night drinking? So what. To stand in condemnation of his fondness for a pint is to miss the point entirely. Darren Clarke is a brilliant golfer, one of the greatest natural talents in the sport. And this was the moment when all the rich promise of years of graft finally came majestically together.

Golf is a game that requires fantastic reserves of judgement, cool, concentration and calculation. Anyone who has ever looked down the fairway and tried to gauge if they need a three iron or a five will tell you. Every shot is a challenge – in particular on a links course, in a high wind, with the effects of rain also coming into the equation.

Tiny fractions of milimetres variation in the point and angle of contact of club and ball can make an entirely disproportionate difference in the end result. And that’s just on the straight shots. At the highest level these guys learn how to execute a fade, so that they can do it ten times in a row, playing the ball sweetly to the left knowing that it will gently swing back to the right, where the intended target is – avoiding trees, bunkers or other hazards along the way. They know how to draw it too, going right to come left and hoping to get and extra fifteen or twenty metres length as a result.



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