DELICATE.Still delicate. The sadness might not be written on Darren Clarke's face now, and there is less of a need to tip-toe around the void in his personal life, but you can't help wondering who he is today.

The single parent determined to get on with his life and raise his two young boys, or the professional golfer trying to resurrect a career.

Players can be extraordinarily artful in coming up with reasons for a slide down the world rankings. Excuses ranging from an equipment change to global warming are trotted out, but for Clarke, watching his wife's health decline, golf became almost an irrelevance. Ambition not just on hold, but forgotten.

Yet, when he was at his lowest in the weeks following Heather's death, golf might just have saved him. He never bought into any possible sympathy vote at the Ryder Cup, and despite the unqualified support from all and sundry, he was desperate not to fail.

If he had, his personal pride would have been dented, and Ian Woosnam would have been pilloried for selecting an emotional basket case.

"I was playing for my wife, playing for myself, playing for all sorts of different reasons, and there was an awful lot of pressure throughout the entire week, " he says.

"And I'd like to think that the sort of pressure I experienced at the K Club will stand to me in the future as well."

Over those highly-charged few days, he won over his doubts, won over the Americans, and won the crowd.

Afterwards, there was the inevitable anti-climax, accompanied by an unbearable emptiness, but he had proved to himself that he could still compete under the gun.

Or had he? Because as he begins the next phase of his life, on and off the course, there are questions over his future. Now out of the world's top 50 players for the first time in an age, it is possible that the fire has dimmed. On the one hand, this is a fresh start, while on the other, 2007 might be a requiem for one of golf 's hardest punching heavyweights.

Last year, he should have won the Irish Open, he could have won the Scottish Open, and in 2005, he did win in Japan, but then Clarke has not been able to prioritise his day job. "There were times when I had no interest in the game whatsoever, " he says.

His last victory of real consequence was at the NEC Invitational in 2003, and he last contended in a major back in 2001.

Although he deservedly stole the show at the Ryder Cup, he has only flitted in and out of the game's consciousness. Touches of sheer brilliance here, followed understandably by a downbeat 75 there.

Today, it seems as if the renowned Clarke snap is confined only to his dress sense.

If he rejects the inclination to praise and to bury him at once, he knows why the doubts are present. He is not defiant about his prospects for the season, more determined to get his freewheeling game back and to take it from there. In fact, there's a sense that he's as uncertain about the year ahead as everyone else.

"I don't know what I'll be disappointed about or what I'll be pleased about, I'll only be able to tell you that at the end of the year. I can tell you that I still want to win, that I'm desperate to win. At the minute, I'm just trying to get back into golf. I've been working very hard, but I've lost the scoring knack, and you can only get that back through playing competitively."

This past week, Clarke has been taking care of some business by signing a threeyear deal as the touring professional for Oceanico Golf, a company which has dropped serious cash of late in the Algarve. Having just acquired five courses at Vilamoura - including the renowned Old Course as well as the more brash Victoria - Oceanico and one of its Irish founders, Gerry Fagan, have become a major player in Portugal's tourism industry.

With Nick Faldo and Christy O'Connor junior already on board as course designers at a new Algarve development scheduled to open in 2008, Oceanico turned to Clarke to carry their torch around the world's elite tournaments.

No one can predict if their investment will pay off.

Clarke once said that "to be really successful in this game you have to be selfish". The likes of Faldo and Colin Montgomerie have paid a heavy personal price for their oneeyed drive and determination, and who knows what goes on behind the walls of many an elite player's mansion.

"I can be selfish when I'm away on my own, but I can't be when I'm at home, " he says. "That's the way it is. I know what my priority is when I'm at a tournament, but when I'm at home, the boys are my priority."

He also mentioned that Heather's death changed him, that he realised it was time to "grow up". If the terrible experience brought some perspective, and if he's no longer as hard on himself on the course, is it possible that the days of beating Tiger Woods for the WGC Match Play title, of scorching around the K Club in 60, and of sweeping to an imperious victory at the NEC Invitational will never be bettered?

"I don't know if what has happened has changed me as a competitor, and that's because I haven't been that competitive. I haven't really got myself up there in a tournament as yet, but I've a run of events coming up, so if and when I get into contention, then I'll see if it has changed me as a competitor.

"I haven't set any golf goals for the past few years, but I have a few now. But it's difficult trying to balance golf and my two boys. I can't say I want to do this, or I want to do that because I'm trying to make sure that I'm there for them."

He'll be 39 later this year.

Even if Vijay Singh has redefined longevity for the world's leading players, the clock ticks remorselessly. Singh was 41 when he won the USPGA Championship in 2004, however, taking Woods out of the equation, major titles are mostly the preserve of younger men than Clarke.

"I would dearly love to win a major, and I still believe I've got a realistic chance.

Obviously, I'm not going to expect to win straight away, but if I can get back to the golf I know I can play, then there's no reason why I can't put myself in there to contend.

"I would like to think that the best is yet to come, and of course, I'd like to be back in the top 50 of the world rankings, but if you don't play a lot of golf that's what happens. I honestly don't know if I'm close to my best, what I do know is that for the last while my putting has been average.

But then again, my whole game has been dictated by outside events for the last four or five years."

In January, a British tabloid reported that he had ended a romantic relationship, and the paper then chronicled the end of the affair under the heading 'The Dumper's Diary'. Clarke subsequently admitted that he had made one or two mistakes on and off the course, and that he wouldn't be repeating them.

Given his personal circumstances and given the nature of the Ryder Cup exposure, he was more human, more vulnerable, and suddenly fair game. From now on, he's aiming for the back pages only. In Portugal last week, someone asked him a strange question.

How, when his career comes to an end, does he want to be remembered? "As someone who tried. You can do no more than try your best. I haven't always done it in the past, but I'm trying to do it now."

Whether Darren Clarke's best is good enough will be clearer by the end of the year.