Golf US MastersJust another of life's little mysteries. Here we are crowding around Darren Clarke at the back of the 18th green, just minutes after the Ulsterman has tapped in a finishing birdie to jump into contention in the US Masters, and his mind is still on rod fishing and the sandy beaches of the Bahamas.

The old Clarke would have had fanciful notions swirling around in his head, his mind obsessed with majors and leaping ahead to what might be.

Not now, not this Clarke, who has a new perspective on what's really important. On the eve of this season's first major, Clarke, whose wife is battling cancer, remarked:

"Golf's not as important (anymore). I'll see how I play. If I play well, I play well. If I don't, I don't. It's as simple as that . . . I don't know if it is an advantage or not. It could go one of two ways. It could be fantastic, or it could be horrible."

It hasn't been horrible.

For two days, Clarke - who late last year produced a golf psychology book in collaboration with Dr Karl Morris called Golf: The Mind Factor which has clearly passed over to his demeanour - has played with a patience that was alien to his old self.

When shots have been mishit (a rare occurrence, it must be said) or the golfing gods have attempted to wrest away his serenity, Clarke has refused to get upset.

Take the 18th hole yesterday. All day Clarke had driven the ball beautifully. He found 12 of 14 fairways and, as often as not, followed up the drive by finding the green in regulation.

There were a couple of exceptions; but on the 18th, Clarke's drive finished in the middle of the fairway. The closer he got to his ball, though, the clearer the view he got of the divot where it had come to rest.

In the old days, dark clouds would have hovered over his head. "You guys know me as well as I do. I would not have been happy," joked Clarke of what all golfers perceive to be an injustice.

Instead, Clarke accepted his fate, punched a nine-iron the 152 yards he had remaining to the flag and listened as the crowd around the green grew louder and louder as his patience was repaid and the ball kicked off the right side of the green, trickled towards the hole, brushed the cup and finally came to rest two feet away.

The tap-in birdie which gave him a round of 70 for two-under-par 142.

Clarke, who spent a week's holidays on the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas with his wife, Heather, and children, Tyrone and Conor, rather than obsessively working on his game, is convinced the unconventional build-up to the Masters has reaped its rewards.

"I think I've forgotten what I should be doing and am just going out and hitting it. I'm very relaxed. This week I'm being a bit more patient than I have been for quite some time. If I can keep doing that over the weekend, hopefully I can get myself up there.

"Sometimes when you get completely away from the game and hardly touch the clubs, it brings back what is really important and brings back what is not important. I'm not bothered about anything. If I make a mistake, I make a mistake," said Clarke.

Mistakes were rare, but when they did come there was no over-heated reaction. On the 13th, with a six-iron in his hands for his second shot approach to the green on the par five, the ball bounced just right of the hazard line and into the creek.

"If that had happened in the past, I'd have been a bit perturbed to say the least. But today I just walked up, chipped it to three feet and holed the putt (for par)," recalled Clarke.

Whether by accident or design, Clarke's approach - "I hope to keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully I will have a chance," he said - has put him in contention going into the weekend.

It is not unfamiliar territory in the majors, but he has never been so relaxed when put in to similar positions in the past.

Clarke's best Masters came on his debut in 1998, when he finished tied-eighth; and he was the first-round leader in the weather-hit Masters of 2002 when his lack of fitness hindered his progress and he eventually finished in tied-28th.

Family matters have contrived to make golf not as important as it had always seemed, and his perspective has changed. "I'm playing alright, hitting it nicely and I'll just try to keep on doing the same thing. At the end of the day, there's a lot more people want to win this a lot more than I do. I'd love to do it as well, (but) it is not that important."

If Clarke can retain that attitude in the last two rounds, it could prove to be a very interesting weekend indeed.