IN THE unlikely event that golf has a heart, Darren Clarke is situated very close to it. He was the beaten favourite to win both the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year a week ago . . . a title which goes by the unfortunate acronym of SPOTY . . . and favourite to win RTE's Sports Person of the Year . . . also SPOTY . . . last night.

Golf fans seem to feel an extraordinary fondness for the man they rather embarrassingly refer to as Clarkie.

Sources close to the Sunday Tribune stated: "We like him because he's fallible and vulnerable and he smokes and he drinks.

He seems like a nice person.

Another reason that he's loved is that he never plays safe or holds back. If he has a shot over a lake of 220 yards then he'll give it a go. He's gutsy."

Clarke is certainly situated very close to golf 's cash register. Golfers at his level will make a multiple off the course of the sum they have won on it, and Clarke is thought to have won Stg£10m ( 14.93m) so far. His friend Tiger Woods makes US$80m ( 61.1m) per annum.

He is managed by Andrew "Chubby" Chandler of International Sports Management, widely regarded as a very shrewd operator indeed.

Clarke is a sportsman to the tip of his expensive fingers. As well as being a wonderful teenage golfer, he also played rugby for Dungannon Royals.

Like many athletes, he is restless, and always on the move. Even within the permanent boyhood of professional sport Clarke is regarded as a Peter Pan.

After all, the golf circuit is one of the few places where heterosexual men can wear lavender checked trousers, streaks in their hair and pink shirts, and still find a warm welcome in the clubhouse afterwards.

Clarke is a convivial type of bloke. Those who know him have commented how much he has grown up since the onset of the illness of his late wife, Heather.

And here we reach the heart of the matter. Because since Heather Clarke died of breast cancer on 13 August this year, the day before her husband's 38th birthday, Clarke has hardly been out of the news.

First of all there was his appearance as part of the European Ryder Cup team, six weeks after her death. For those of us present in the K Club that day, the thunderous applause which greeted him when he walked on to the first tee was startling.

Clarke then executed a dramatic shot, scoring a birdie on the first hole. The place went wild. When Europe won the Ryder Cup, and Clarke wept in the arms of his caddy, Billy Foster, and the crowd wept in each other's arms, it was hard to remember that this was actually a team made up of 12 men.

Last week, Clarke was effectively outed in a tabloid newspaper as having a sexual relationship with another woman, Nicola Regan, who had been a close friend of the late Heather Clarke. (The Daily Mail helpfully noted that while Clarke had been driving a Lamborghini, Mrs Regan drives "a top of the range Range Rover" although what precisely this explains is unclear. ) Regan's own past is colourful. Her former husband, Andrew, spent Stg£5 million over the course of several years defending himself against legal charges that he had attempted to bribe executives of the CoOp. Mrs Regan stood by her husband throughout this period. Eventually all charges were dropped and Mr Regan, now that the marriage is over, has given the new relationship his blessing.

There has been a lot of speculation about whether Clarke has emerged from his period of mourning a bit too sharpish.

But that, of course, is hardly anyone else's business. Men need women much more than women need men, and few have the strength of character to be single. However, it is interesting to wonder what the reaction of the golfing world would have been if it had been Darren Clarke who had died and Heather Clarke who was going out with one of his closest friends four months after his death. She would have been burned at the stake on the fairway, is what.

Clarke has tried, in a way, to distance himself from the rising tide of sentiment that has been moving to engulf him since his wife's death. He said that he did not want to win SPOTY on the back of a sympathy vote. But, although sports culture likes to pretend that it is made up of calm, rational men, in fact they are as emotional as a bunch of schoolgirls. "If the Irish award was for achievement alone, then Harrington would leave Clarke for dead, " said one golf observer. "Harrington's won the European Order of Merit this year."

The European Ryder Cup team wore pink blazers . . . for breast cancer . . . to collect the cup. Then last month, with admirable speed, Clarke produced a book Heroes All: My Ryder Cup Story, just in time to catch the Christmas book market. Among other things, the book details his feelings at Ryder Cup time . . . many of them, naturally, about his wife. Naturally also, Clarke gave many interviews at the end of last month, when he was promoting the book. So it is not just the media that has been stoking the sentimentality.

Clarke is accorded extraordinary respect within golf. Television cameras will pull away from him if he smokes a cigarette in public (he smokes cigars as well). If Clarke is bending down on course, he's not replacing a divot, but retrieving a fag. The veteran golf commentator Peter Alliss blithely says, "I see Darren's back on the Woodbines."

Yet at the age of 38, Clarke has never won a single major. He is seen as underachieving for his considerable natural talent.

"Harrington is the worker, Clarke is the talent, " said one golf correspondent. These are harsh words about a man who has beaten Tiger Woods twice . . . once on matchplay and once on strokeplay, and won two World Golf Championships. But Clarke himself has pointed out that, at his age, he only has about five years left to win a major. The only Irishman ever to win a British Open was also a Northerner, Fred Daly, who won in 1947.

But even if he never wins a major, Clarke has enough money not to care. He is a benign presence whose future and fortune are assured, designing golf courses and making personal appearances until he thinks it is time to retire. The only potential obstacle to that future is Clarke losing the respect and love of golf fans as he moves into general celebrity.

Amid all the drama, the statistics and the publicity, it is easy for a casual observer to remember that sport is a lot simpler than real life. Clarke's participation at the Ryder Cup was greeted as a miracle of emotional courage. In fact the golf course is his home, and has been since his adolescence.

How much more complicated is a house containing two little boys who have just lost their mother, even when support from both extended families is said to be strong.

All that sport demands of its heroes is that they win a game.

C.V.

Occupation: Golfer Born: 14 August 1968, Dungannon, Co Tyrone.

Father Godfrey, mother Hetty and sister Andrea.

Godfrey Clarke worked as greenskeeper at Dungannon Golf Club for some years.

Marital status: Widower. Two sons, Tyrone (8) and Connor (6) Hobbies: Fast cars; "shing; smoking; applying hair gel In the news because: He has a new girlfriend, and is featuring prominently in end-ofyear awards ceremonies.