As the new Andersen Consulting World Matchplay champion settled into his seat late on Sunday night for the transatlantic flight back to London he might well have allowed himself a wry smile or two. The victory was only a few hours old but already the future was opening up right in front of him. And as Darren Clarke sipped on his champagne he may have mused just a little on the strange world of sporting celebrity into which he had just catapulted himself.

The journey towards that handshake on the 15th green at La Costa with the world's best golfer, Tiger Woods, has been a long and sometimes tortuous one for Clarke and those who have followed his career. He is not a man with whom attention and scrutiny sit easy and on more than one occasion in the past his response to both has been bristly and tetchy. This, in turn, produced a cooler public response than might otherwise have been expected for this country's top golfing figure. It was almost as if the population at large sensed Clarke's apparent reluctance or inability to make the move into world golf's premier league and was, as a result, reluctant to travel the extra mile with him.

The shorthand for this in sporting circles is to label a sportsperson as an "underachiever". Lurking just below the surface is the implication that this person does not always play to the expected rules and is, to use another sporting euphemism "a little difficult."

Clarke has not always played to those rules and suggestions of these failings have pockmarked Darren Clarke's professional career. First there was his European Tour record which was scattered with top 10 finishes but only four tournament wins. Then there was the 1997 British Open when he was four in front midway through the third round at Troon only to fall away on the last day and finish joint second behind Justin Leonard. Even after that apparent breakthrough into the big time, there were still banana skins aplenty.

Most recent was the public spat over his decision not to play in last year's Irish Open and opt instead for a week's practice at his beloved Royal Portrush. A fairly minor story became something much bigger in the goldfish bowl of Irish journalism and Clarke found himself boxed into a corner. In the face of such concerted bad press, a series of damage limitation media interviews was organised in a half-hour gap between rounds. Despite just having shot an effortless 64 Clarke sat down to be quizzed in the club bar at Portrush with little enthusiasm.

For 10 tense minutes as the conversation skirted around the issue of appearance money, the questions were generally longer than the answers they prompted. Clarke was defensive and impatient as he looked longingly out the window at the Portrush links as if they were his only friend in the world.

Then something strange happened. Somewhere along the way the subject of the Omagh bomb and Clarke's Herculean fundraising efforts to help the subsequent appeal for the victims and their families was raised. The transformation was remarkable. It was as if a cloud had been lifted and all the earlier suspicion and aloofness had melted away. Clarke's face was suddenly suffused with a humanity rarely seen in his public utterances as he spoke about how the tragedy had moved him. Many of his family ties are in the Tyrone area and there was also a quiet but palpable pride in the thousands of pounds his Golf Classic had raised for the appeal. The mood had changed beyond recognition and irritation had been replaced by genuine warmth.

Unfortunately that has been a side to Clarke to which few people have had access. More familiar has been the sight of a supremely talented golfer wrestling with the demons which were threatening to stymie his talent. The experience of his close friend Colin Montgomerie will have been a salutary one because once you get a reputation for being surly or difficult it is incredibly difficult to shake off.

Up until those magical few days in San Diego last weekend the real concern was that Darren Clarke was treading the same road as Montgomerie. All the promise engendered by his raw and innate talent was still there - the fact that he is the only man on the European Tour to shoot 60 twice is all the proof you need of that. The conundrum for Clarke looked like being how to harness those gifts in some sort of meaningful way.

The hope is that last Sunday's win now renders most of that academic. It is revealing that his manager, Andrew Chandler, has focused both on the mental benefits it can bring and on his conviction that nobody can ever hang the underachieving tag on his charge ever again. If Darren Clarke appears to be walking just a little easier this week, that's because a monkey has been cast off his back.

The world championship and the money that goes with it were welcome rewards for his heroics but the crowning glory of it all was to beat Woods so comprehensively in the final. The extent of that achievement will be glaringly obvious to professionals and golf aficionados throughout the world but its impact goes far beyond that. To beat Woods is to climb out of the confines of mere sport and into the spheres of celebrity and popular culture.

The world number one is one of those rare sporting figures whose appeal transcends his chosen sport. He is the golfer who is recognised even by people who remain oblivious to golf's charms. In a ridiculously short period of time he has achieved a global status and that kind of fame produces its own powerful slipstream. Having claimed Woods's scalp, Clarke can now sit back and enjoy the ride as he is pulled along in that same slipstream.

The irony will not have been lost on a man who seems more inclined than most in his position to questioning the worth of this prevalent fascination with sporting celebrity. Given the flurry of media activity both here and throughout the world since last weekend and that indefinable "Woods factor", Darren Clarke would be forgiven for thinking that the fuss would not have been as great had he won one of the Majors or sunk the winning putt at a Ryder Cup. The current hype is proof that modern sport is becoming less about what you win and more about the circumstances in which you win it.

All these are contradictions with which Clarke has wrestled for the past decade. But it could just be that this fantastic thing which has happened will give him the confidence and self-knowledge to move on from everything that has stunted his golfing development. His noble response to Omagh was evidence that we should have no concerns about Darren Clarke, the man. Now he has an opportunity to dispel any lingering doubts about Darren Clarke, the golfer. Good guys do sometimes come first. This is Darren Clarke's chance to soar.