Darren Clarke is still keeping Lee Westwood under pressure for the Order of Merit award for money earned on golf's 1988 European Tour. But the Ulster man better watch out if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) allows golf back into the Games as a medal sport.

Last weekend at the British Masters Clarke was evidently suffering from a virus which took his mind off the golf. His comments regarding the illness were clearly as innocent as they were revealing.

"I started with the flu on Tuesday and it has got progressively worse. I had a good dose of Night Nurse last night and that put me to sleep but I'm feeling terrible. I'm taking Paracetamol, Nurofen, whatever I can get. I'm a walking chemist," he said.

Coming as it did this week when Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates defended proposals that could lead to proven drugs users being thrown into jail during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Clarke's comment illustrates the gulf in attitude between major sports on the whole issue of drug testing.

Irish athlete Marie McMahon was censured in Atlanta for taking an over-the-counter medicine in 1996, causing enormous embarrassment to both herself, BLE and the Olympic Council of Ireland. The whole issue seems to have become an absurd dilemma in sport in that golf can permit certain substances that could herald the effective end of a career in another sport.