Ryder Cup and Other Team Golf
Clarke has represented Ireland as both an amateur and as a professional, most notably at the World Cup and Alfred Dunhill Cup. He was a member of five consecutive European Ryder Cup teams in 1997, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2006, winning on four occasions and was also appointed a non-playing vice captain by Colin Montgomerie in 2010.
Clarke's most notable appearance at the Ryder Cup was in 2006, six weeks after the death of his wife Heather. Heather had loved the Ryder Cup and encouraged Darren to compete in it, so he made himself available for selection. European captain Ian Woosnam chose Clarke as one of his two wild cards, and he contributed three points from three matches to Europe's victory, and was embraced by members of the European and U.S. teams after he finished the tournament.
Read more about this topic: Darren Clarke
Famous quotes containing the words ryder, cup, team and/or golf:
“The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle-queen of yore,
Maryland! my Maryland!”
—James Ryder Randall (1839–1908)
“In poorer lands
No one touches the water of life.
It has no taste
And though it refreshes absolutely
It is a cup that must also pass
Until everybody
Gets some advantage....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Did I make you go insane?
Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive through?
Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist
who dragged you out like a golf cart?
Did I make you go insane?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)