The finest moment of his long career came at The 2011 Open Championship, where he held off Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson to clinch a thrilling victory at Royal St George’s. The highlight came five years after his wife, Heather, died of cancer – shortly after which he inspired Europe to an emotionally charged Ryder Cup win over the United States at The K Club, having been picked as a wild card. His next involvement in The Ryder Cup came in 2010, when he was one of Captain Colin Montgomerie’s Vice-Captains and helped engineer a narrow win at The Celtic Manor Resort. Has a habit of setting new records. In the 1999 European Open he became the first player on The European Tour to shoot 60 for a second time, having achieved it first in the 1992 European Monte Carlo Open, and in 2001 he became the first Irishman to win on home soil since John O’Leary in 1982, when he captured the European Open. In 2002 he became the first player to win the English Open three times and in 2003 became the first player apart from Tiger Woods to capture more than one World Golf Championship title. A dedicated worker for charity, he organised a special Pro-Am at Portmarnock in September 1998 in aid of the victims of the Omagh bombing tragedy and set up his own Darren Clarke Foundation, which not only helps further the development of junior golf in Ireland, but also now raises money for Breast Cancer Awareness.