Clarke out of Irish Open

Looking beyond the £1.3 million Volvo PGA Championship, which starts here on an immaculate West Course this morning, Darren Clarke has decided not to play in the Murphy's Irish Open in July. "I dislike the Druids Glen course and my record there is abysmal," he said, with remarkable candour.

Indeed his record is not impressive. Since Druids Glen first played host to the Irish Open in 1996, Clarke's finishes have been: tied 43rd, tied 15th and missed cut. It could be said that he got off to a bad start, given that his first competitive round there was a 79, three years ago.

But his decision is a severe blow to the sponsors who, only this week, announced a prize fund of Stg £1 million. Granted, Ronan Rafferty was another leading Irish player to have absented himself from his national championship, but Clarke's withdrawal is especially disappointing in this, a Ryder Cup year.

As far as his manager is concerned, the problem goes beyond the player's dislike of the course. In fact his colleague in International Sports Management (ISM), Lee Westwood, seems likely to return to an event in which he was 15th last year.

"I have no sympathy with the sponsors," said Andrew Chandler of ISM yesterday. "In the pre-tournament advertising last year, they used a photograph of Darren which was two years out of date: he was wearing a Titleist visor instead of a MacGregor."

He added: "I told them at the time that he would play this year for expenses only, provided they were paying nobody else in the field. Then I discovered they were paying John Daly." The sponsors, who have banned appearance money from their event, argued that Daly's fee was being handled by Druids Glen, but Chandler is convinced that this is only splitting hairs.

Meanwhile, Clarke, who has been getting up to $30,000 in appearance money in Europe, will again head the Irish challenge this weekend in a field which contains three of the world's top-10 - Ernie Els (fifth), Westwood (sixth) and Colin Montgomerie (eighth). As is happens, Clarke will play the first two rounds in the company of Montgomerie, who is defending the title, and Bernhard Langer, who set a record aggregate of 270 - 18 under par - for Wentworth when capturing this title 12 years ago.

The Tyroneman's form in Germany last weekend, when he finished seventh behind Tiger Woods in the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open, did not escape the notice of Ryder Cup skipper Mark James. "It's good to see Darren playing well again," said James yesterday. "People have told me he's back to his old self."

The other Irish challengers at Wentworth, in starting order, are: Damian McGrane, Paul McGinley, Robert Giles, Des Smyth, Eamonn Darcy, Stephen Hamill, Padraig Harrington, Philip Walton and John McHenry. McGinley, who played poorly for the last 54 holes in Germany, eased back this week.

"I was pushing myself too hard, with the result that I had absolutely no feel," he said. "So I have confined my preparation today to chipping and putting and a walk around the course." Harrington found himself similarly afflicted and he, too, eased back this week.

Els, who recently brought a house on the Wentworth estate overlooking the course, will be bringing home a new arrival to the family. His wife Liezl gave birth on Wednesday in a local hospital to their first child, a girl.

"I think England in the summertime is the best place on the planet," said Els, who also has homes in Florida and South Africa. "I was at the birth and everything went well." He practised with Mark McNulty and Tony Johnstone yesterday afternoon before returning to the hospital.

It can be amusing to note the contrasting attitude of professionals to media attention. Ideally, they would like to project the attitude that as a breed, scribes are at best, an infernal nuisance.

So, one could imagine Montgomerie welcoming the fact that he was rarely bothered in Heidelberg, while media attention was focused on Woods and his US-based colleagues. Not a bit of it. "I wasn't asked into the press centre once," he said yesterday, like a child denied an invitation to a birthday party. "I suppose it was to be expected since I finished with a 73 for 20th place," he mused.

One suspects the Scot is determined to get back in the limelight this weekend.