In a lot of cases, there's no smoke without fire. But Darren Clarke was intent on dousing out a potential wildfire before it had time to catch after he emerged from the recorder's hut at Baltusrol Golf Club yesterday where he opened his US PGA Championship with an opening round 73 that normally would have had storm clouds gathering over his head.

This time, though, Clarke reacted to a story in a British tabloid that inferred he wasn't playing in the Seve Trophy - the biennial match between Britain and Ireland against the continent of Europe - as a snub to team captain Colin Montgomerie's behaviour in Indonesia earlier this season when it was deemed the Scot had infringed the rules.

He was subsequently censured by the European Tour's tournament committee, of which both Monty and Clarke are members.

The Seve Trophy takes place this year at the Wynyard in England on September 22nd-25th and, currently, Clarke is second (behind Padraig Harrington) in the qualifying table. Clarke - who won't be playing in the match - only learned of the story when he went to sign his card, and responded by insisting that "the reason I'm not playing is purely a scheduling issue".

Clarke's principal sponsor is Barclays and the player has a number of corporate commitments that he must fulfil as part of that contract in Asia, where he has decided to add on a couple of tournaments while he is in the Far East.

"This is a story where a mountain has been made out of a molehill. It's one of those things that has been taken out of context and somebody has decided to look upon it the wrong way . . . my whole scheduling anyway is very tentative, obviously, with Heather at home, so these are my plans at the moment."

Of more immediate concern, though, is the US PGA and yesterday's three-over-par score was, Clarke felt, symptomatic of how he has played this season. "I was shocking," was the rather honest reckoning of Clarke.

"I played very poorly and was grinding away and then managed to three-putt three of the last five greens.

"Plus-three is not a disastrous score but for a grinding day it would have been nice to get it to one over and then maybe play a bit better.

"It's just a continuation of the way I've played all year. I'm not quite playing that well, and this is another one of those things," explained Clarke.