It would have been tough to root against Darren Clarke winning the British Open on Sunday even if he hadn’t spent the past five years of his life buried in an emotional pot bunker.
After all, how can you pull against a guy whose agent – a fellow named “Chubby,” for gosh sake – tells him, “You play better when you’re fat.”
Clarke is a guy who’s quit smoking three times, yet walked the fairways of Royal St. George’s on Sunday with a cigarette between his fingers, the nerves too great to kick nicotine to the curb with his very first major title on the line.
He used to have a temper, “but I’ve mellowed some,” the 42-year-old Northern Irishman told The Associated Press. “A little bit.”
Mostly, he is, in his words, “a bit of a normal bloke. There’s not many airs and graces about me.”