Darren Clarke, with his acknowledged love of accumulating money to spend, will be faced this week by a challenger who is driven largely by the accumulation of titles. By way of proof, Lee Westwood has the 18th hole flag from every tournament he has won, including six already this season.

In the context of this week's challenge, the most significant of those flags came from Gut Kaden Course in Hamburg last May, when Westwood beat Tiger Woods to capture the Deutsche Bank Open. Now he trails Clarke by £63,000 in the quest for the Order of Merit title.

Earlier positions were reversed last Sunday at Montecastillo, where Clarke finished second to Pierre Fulke in the Volvo Masters but moved to ninth position in the world rankings. "Of course it hurt not winning, after getting myself into a position to do so," he conceded yesterday. "But the more important thing was I now have a real chance of winning the Order of Merit. "Looking towards the weekend, I can't afford to be thinking on two levels. I'll be thinking only of winning the tournament or finishing as high up as I possibly can. If that delivers the Order of Merit, then obviously I'll be thrilled.

"I know I can play under pressure. The bigger the tournaments, the more pressure there is. If you keep giving myself opportunities, even the big ones are going to come your way, like what happened to me in the Andersen Consulting against Tiger last February."

Clarke likes Valderrama, despite some quirky elements to the layout. "The best thing is probably the condition of the course - there's never a bad lie on the fairway. And the greens are fantastic. We don't often play courses which are so well presented.

"On the other hand, there are a couple of doglegs where trees come more into play, like the one in the middle of the second, and the way you can be blocked out after a good drive down the 18th. It's an interesting challenge."

The course has undergone quite a few refinements since 1989 when, in the second staging of the Volvo Masters, Ronan Rafferty took the title to become the first Irish winner of the Order of Merit. A total of £465,981 for the season was enough to secure it: this weekend, the Tyroneman will need probably four times that amount.

Arguably the most interested observer here over the weekend will be Andrew "Chubby" Chandler, who manages both Clarke and Westwood. "Little did I imagine when I got into this business about 10 years ago that I'd be managing two players in the top-10 in the world," he said. "In our early contracts, there was no mention of appearance money: it seemed like so much pie in the sky that I never considered it.

"Now, depending on how things work out, it looks as if one of them is going to be very happy on Monday morning."

Meanwhile, when Woods took up his position on the practice ground yesterday, Padraig Harrington was close-by. Indeed the Dubliner has become quite a familiar figure there. In the chilly winds and rainshowers of Monday afternoon, he spent four hours patiently working with his coach, Bob Torrance, attempting to sort out swing wrinkles which had led to damagingly inconsistent driving in recent weeks. And he was back there again yesterday.

"I'm trying to get my swing right," he said simply, with three drivers on view, including the new, state-of-the-art ERC II. "All this work with my driving is leaving little time for my short game, but it has to be done. I can't begin to think of how I might play this week until I get it right."