Grieving Clarke can lose himself among the greens and fairways

As most people who have lost someone they were very close to will admit, you don't control grief. It controls you. Any time, any place, you can break down.

Try as you might, you simply can't manage the random helplessness of grief because it comes from a place deeply embedded in your soul. Just ask Irish golfer Darren Clarke. The native of Ulster became perhaps the world's most famous widower when he helped the European team dismember the US in the Ryder Cup this past September outside of Dublin.

Clarke was participating despite the death of his wife after a long struggle with cancer only one month earlier. The image of Clarke weeping after winning his singles match on Sunday melted the hearts of millions worldwide and elevated him to the type of celebrity that his golf game, while obviously very good, never has.

Everybody wanted a piece of Clarke when he showed up in Bangkok to play for Europe against Asia this week in the second edition of the Royal Trophy. Despite the eight-man European team featuring five players from their powerful Ryder Cup squad, he was still far and away the man in demand.

Clarke has a well-earned reputation as a straight shooter. He is jovial but businesslike. Co-operative yet guarded. Above all he is likeable, genuine and as a global viewing audience saw at the last Ryder Cup, very vulnerable right now.

It is a fact that Clarke basically admitted to a couple members of the Irish media on the eve of the first day of the Royal Trophy. Clarke had become involved with a recently divorced woman who was a friend of both he and his late wife. He had made the startling revelation to The Sun tabloid in mid-December, a scant four months after his wife's death, that he and his new companion 'get on really well and make each other happy'.