Smells likef success.

He has perfected the look that appears to notice everyone, but actually engages no one, yet if Clarke does catch a familiar eye, he'll want to know much more about your late night than what price the Hang Seng closed at.

When it comes down to it, the image is about his private affair with the fashion industry and not about passing himself off as some smooth dealmaker. Darren Clarke happens to be a very good golfer, sometimes a brilliant one. "Sure, I can't do anything else, " he says, and the talent has delivered the trappings.

He's the guy who once roared into the leafy surrounds of Wentworth on some class of a powerful trike with his arse just a couple of inches off the ground. He has the Ferraris, the dream home in an exclusive enclave of Surrey, the investments, the gizmos, the threads, the big cigars and he'll happily tell you that he might have about 50 watches on the go at the moment.

On occasions, he has thrown the toys out of the pram, and on occasions, his fuse has burned down much too quickly, but no one could ever accuse him of not sucking the marrow from life.

Seems he has it all. His wife who accepts his determination to be remembered as a major champion, his two sons who are beginning to understand what the old man does for a living, and a career that has earned him recognition and made him rich.

But Darren Clarke is living under a cloud, so much so that he's not sure if he can be truly competitive this season, and so much so that he's not sure if he'll actually be playing in the Masters in April never mind contending. His targets for 2006? Next question.

Heather Clarke has cancer, and at the moment she is undergoing yet another bout of intensive chemotherapy.

The disease came, went and then devastatingly returned last year. Golf is not exactly on the back burner, but Clarke's priorities have changed.

"If you want to be successful, especially in this game, you have to be selfish, so that has changed for me. Over the last couple of years, I've been trying to balance things up a bit, and maybe it hasn't had a bad effect on me. It's made me more patient on the golf course that's for sure.

"But I can't look too far into the future. My determination and desire when I'm out there haven't weakened, but other factors are affecting what I can and cannot do on the course. There are times in your life when other things have to take precedence and because of Heather's continuing battle, that's what I have to do."

If the hopes and fears of a serious illness are constant, the low point came during last May's BMW Championship at Wentworth when drugs Heather had been prescribed following chemotherapy adversely affected her heart. The situation looked so bleak that doctors told Clarke that she was unlikely to pull through.

He's sitting in a corner of the Belfry's Warwick Suite which doubled as Europe's team room during the dramatic 2002 Ryder Cup, but those heady days now seem from another life. "She was critically ill in intensive care, that was extremely tough, " he says as his voice trails off.

If he understandably finds it hard to articulate the blind panic that comes when a loved one is close to death, he thought Michael Campbell got it just about right last month when the US Open champion was asked how he had managed to keep a more even temperament on the golf course.

"It's only a game, big deal, " Campbell explained. "I learned that when a very good friend of mine, Heather Clarke, was on her deathbed, and I'm thinking, 'What's the big deal? It's only a golf tournament here.' Put life in perspective. Ever since that day, hit a bad shot, who cares?"

The New Zealander's words touched Clarke, and boosted his determination to help Heather beat the hand she has been dealt.

Now and then, he has also talked with Tiger Woods, whose father Earl is fighting cancer. Woods, he says, has been "very supportive", but he's unwilling to elaborate.

He pulled out of the BMW after 36 holes, then missed the US Open the following month, and then later in the season he quit after two rounds of the Volvo Masters at Valderrama and flew home.

"It's been hard to focus at times on the course, no doubt.

If I'm playing well then I'm okay, but if I'm struggling it's a complete waste of time. It was a case of me doing no one any good at Valderrama, my brain was scrambled, I wasn't able to concentrate. I suppose, basically, I was playing crap and I wanted to get out of there. Heather was waiting on the result of an important scan, so it was better that I left."

If his preparation was skewed last year, he managed just about enough practice to avoid having to play from memory. He remembers blowing the MCI Heritage at Hilton Head where he played the last 13 holes in nine over par, and late on, he remembers the win at the Taiheyo Masters in Japan, as well as a couple of runner-up finishes in South Africa and California, but recently he had to ask his caddie Billy Foster how the season actually panned out.

"One win and 13 top-10s, " Foster replied. No longer that energised by top-10 finishes, Clarke would still take it in the circumstances.

Between breaks, he plans to play in Qatar and Dubai, then on to the west coast of America, before Florida and the lead-in to the Masters, but it's a plan, no more. "Heather is sending me out there. If you lived with me, you'd want me out of the house. Obviously, I want to be at home at the moment, but because essentially I've been travelling since I was 16 or 17, it's not what I've been used to.

"If I find myself in a position to win something, then I'll go for it, but I can't look forward to the majors, I just can't afford to be bothered about them right now. There's no point building up my hopes and expectations."

He's in the gym four or five times a week working on his stamina . . . "There's not much about my routine that compares with what Tiger does" . . . and he's hitting a few balls, but there's no map for 2006.

As for Ireland's Ryder Cup, nine months away, all he'll say at this stage is that he really wants to qualify for the team. "I don't know if Woosie would give me a pick if I wasn't able to play my way in, that's not for me to say. If I wasn't playing to a reasonable standard, and was still close enough to making the team, would I want a pick in the first place? No. I wouldn't feel comfortable if I felt I hadn't earned the right to get a pick."

He famously beat Woods in the final of the Accenture World Match Play on a day when he played some majestic golf, but could he do something like that again? "Maybe, at my very best, but at the moment, if I played him 10 times, I'd probably take a half five times."

The money may help, the creature comforts may help, yet the future remains desperately uncertain. At 37, you see the same extravagant, outstanding player on the outside, now made more human because of his wife's predicament.

As Darren Clarke gets up to leave, the image is still as vibrant as ever. But the man has changed.