Sponsors add new dimension for Clarke

In terms of financial incentives, Darren Clarke's latest tournament win has put him a quarter of the way towards reaping a $1 million bonus. That's how much his main corporate sponsors, Dimension Data, are willing to pay the Irishman if he manages to win four tournaments this season.

For the player himself, his win in the Dimension Data ProAm on South Africa's Sunshine Tour has given him immediate impetus towards achieving a personal goal - to get into the top-five in the world rankings. Clarke's win in Sun City gave him enough points to move to ninth in the latest world rankings, an improvement of three places on his position last week.

As far as keeping the sponsors happy was concerned, it certainly didn't do Clarke any harm that his amateur partner for the four days play in Sun City was Jeremy Ord, chairman of Dimension Data, sponsor of the tournament and the player. But it's not all take as far as Clarke is concerned. Indeed, while out in South Africa, Clarke, stablemate Lee Westwood and manager Chubby Chandler, took the initiative of sponsoring two South African black players, Omar Sandys and Lindani Ndwandwe.

"We thought it would be a nice thing to try and help a couple of up and coming golfers from South Africa to further their careers, hopefully with the money and maybe a bit of advice along the way, helping them to rise to great heights," explained Chandler.

Meanwhile, Padraig Harrington plans to be even more discerning this year in selecting his tour schedule. Consequently, one of the first casualties will be the Sao Paulo Brazilian Open which gave the Dubliner a confidence-boosting win last season a week before his debut appearance in the US Masters.

Harrington has decided to play in the Players' Championship on the US Tour on March 22nd-25th - the same week as the Sao Paulo event - which means he won't be defending his crown. "I thought long and hard about missing Brazil. In the past, I have always been critical of players who didn't defend their titles. However, all the top players in the world will be in Sawgrass and I didn't want people to think I was chickening out of facing them by playing in Brazil instead. So, the decision was effectively made for me."

Having worked hard on his game in recent weeks - "This is probably the most intensive time for me in terms of practise," he said - Harrington is ready for a three-week stint on the circuit. He departs at the end of this week for Malaysia where he will compete in next week's Malaysian Open, followed by the Singapore Open and then the Dubai Desert Classic. After that, his next appearance will be in Sawgrass and, then, he has a week off prior to the Masters.

Someone who isn't yet in a position to map out his schedule to such an extent is Richie Coughlan. However, the 26year-old Offaly man is definitely in the field for this week's Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines in California, his fourth outing of the season on the US Tour.

Coughlan has successively made the cut in his last two tournaments - the Sony Open in Hawaii and last weekend's Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which was won by Davis Love III who tied the outward record of 28 strokes on his way to a final round 63 and a 72-holes total of 16-under-par 272 for a one-shot win over Vijay Singh - but he has only amassed $18,773 in prizemoney which leaves him in 131st place on the moneylist. Coughlan took $9,360 for his teid-51st place finish in Pebble Beach. Interestingly, Coughlan currently stands 33rd among all players in birdie averages and is placed as high as 12th in birdies on par fives. His achilles heel, to date, however, has been a poor final round and his fourth round average of 74 has him ranked a lowly 144th in that particular statistic. The moral is simple: Coughlan has to improve his final day scoring if he is to get into the really big money.

While Coughlan is the sole Irishman in the field at Torrey Pines, two of his compatriots - David Higgins and Ronan Rafferty - are included in the field for the Greg Norman International in Sydney.