THIS JOB COULD COST ME FRIENDS
Captain Clarke will be ruthless in his pursuit of Ryder Cup glory
IT is about control for Darren Clarke. It always has been. Everyone who knows Europe’s Ryder Cup captain also knows that the public image of the hedonistic, happy-go-lucky, cigar-smoking, Guinness-swilling Mr Geniality doesn’t reflect the real man.
It does not reveal the workaholic or the perfectionist, the golfer you give a wide berth when he falls short of his own expectations.
It does not reveal the man who is already working on a third draft of his opening ceremony speech even though he is more than six months away from making it.
It does not reveal the man who cheerfully admits he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Take the clothes in his wardrobe, for instance.
Because his weight fluctuates, they are hung in size order and meticulously arranged in a line going from dark to light.
‘It’s completely messed up,’ says Clarke, laughing. Which is another way of saying it’s obsessively ordered.
If being organised can be measured on a sliding scale that runs from ‘Relaxed’ to ‘Bernhard Langer’, Clarke explains he is much closer to the Langer end of the spectrum.
The German was the epitome of micro-control at Oakland Hills in 2004 and Clarke is already routinely studying data sent back to him from every tournament, recording prospective team members’ performances on par threes and par fives. Nothing is left to chance.
It is unlikely the 2011 Open champion will be scribbling potential pairings on scraps of paper during practice and trying to pass them off as a sandwich order, as Sir Nick Faldo did at Valhalla in 2008.
Clarke will have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C. He will be involved. He will man-manage. He will know the characters of each of his players inside-out.
Part of it is fear of failure. Europe have won six of the last seven Ryder Cups and 47-year-old Clarke does not want to be remembered as one of the exceptions to the rule.
‘Fear of failure has been my biggest driving force since I started playing the game,’ he says. ‘That goes back to my days as an amateur. If I don’t prepare properly, failure is inevitable.’
It was as part of the need for order that Clarke spoke to his immediate predecessor as Ryder Cup captain, Paul McGinley, on the driving range at a tournament in Dubai last month. The two men, once close friends, had fallen out bitterly. For several years, it had become a running sore in Clarke’s life. He wanted it healed.
For a while, Clarke felt powerless. Partly, that was because he knew he was in the wrong.
In 2011, he had written a private letter to McGinley backing the latter’s bid to be Europe’s captain at Gleneagles in 2014.
Clarke then put himself forward for the job and later suggested that Europe should appoint Colin Montgomerie to go head to head with American skipper Tom Watson. McGinley felt betrayed and the friendship between the two men broke down.
Clarke hated it. He knew he had made missteps but he felt trying to correct them around that time would only add fuel to the fire.
The falling-out was public and embarrassing, and most sympathy lay with McGinley. As the unease lingered on, Clarke knew it was his responsibility to put it right.
‘Paul and I had a great conversation in Dubai,’ adds Clarke. ‘We talked for an hour on the range. He was giving me tips and advice about what he had done.
‘I apologised to him. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I have made some mistakes in my career. I held my hands up because I got things wrong.
‘Did I support Monty that much? No. I was just trying to do what I thought was the right thing for the team. I wasn’t against Paul.
‘I got accused of all sorts of bits and pieces, which were incorrect at the time. There was no point in me saying a word because I wasn’t going to go anywhere with it. All I was concerned about was doing the
right thing for Europe, but things got twisted and taken out of my hands.
‘I let things go. I have moved on. I have made my peace with Paul. I can go back to him and run things past him. He said: “Whatever you want, let me know”.
‘We have buried the hatchet and he offered all sorts of advice. By all accounts, Paul was a brilliant captain at Gleneagles, so I would be foolish if I didn’t try to pick his brains.’
Clarke’s Ryder Cup heritage is rich. His participation in the 2006 competition at the K Club outside Dublin six weeks after his first wife, Heather, had died, was one of the most moving episodes in the history of the event. He played in five Ryder Cups and won four of them.
There are plenty of indications he will be a good man-manager. He is hungry to win, he has charisma and he is ruthless.
Maybe ruthlessness is not one of the qualities readily associated with Clarke’s hail-fellow-well-met persona but it is there and it is close to the surface. He will need it. The Ryder Cup provokes tensions and dramas like no other event in golf. The wildcard selection process is often traumatic. It can cost friends their friendships.
When Thomas Bjorn was left out of the 2008 Ryder Cup team by Ian Woosnam, his reaction was volcanic. ‘My relationship with him is dead,’ said Bjorn, amid a volley of insults.
Clarke knows he will face tough choices. Others have wondered aloud whether he might be tempted to offer preferential treatment to old pals like Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter if they fail to qualify automatically for Hazeltine and need to rely on being among Clarke’s three wildcard picks. Clarke snorts with contempt about that idea.
‘An old pals’ act?’ he says. ‘How could I possibly do that? The Ryder Cup is much more important than that. That’s not going to happen. No chance.
‘I’d have no problem with saying to Lee I was picking a rookie instead of him for a wildcard. Why? Because it’s for the team. It’s not individuals. You have got to manage individuals’ egos but the team is there together.
‘It could cost me friendships. That may well be the case. But tough decisions have to be made and when the Tour afforded me the honour of being captain, those decisions come along with it. Sentiment? There is no place for sentiment in getting the best team possible.
‘There is a ruthless streak to me. If you were to analyse successful professional golfers, if they are not ruthless, they are not successful.
‘Our job and our profession demands selfishness, ruthlessness and inner desire. You must put your job and your golf at the forefront of what you are trying to do, otherwise you will never be successful.’
Despite Europe’ s recent dominance, Clarke knows there is no room for complacency. The idea there ever might be is something else he laughs at.
The Americans will be at home, they will have rowdy support and, as things stand, they boast five of the world’s top 10 golfers, including the clear No 1, Jordan Spieth.
But he countered: ‘Don’t forget we have Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia. We have Danny Willett playing some of the best golf in the world at the moment. A lot’s made about how strong the Americans are. We are not doing too badly ourselves.’
I’ve made my peace with Paul. I am a big enough man to admit that I made a mistake. We have buried the hatchet