LockerRoom: So, that was that. The world ground to a halt. Commerce ceased. Men laid down arms. The lame and the halt stood up to get a better view.

Did the earth move for you too, darling? Morning-after feelings? Ireland lost the war on cliche. It rained all weekend and USA Today described Paul O'Toole, the chief executive of Tourism Ireland, as having a "leprechaun-like smile". Many and liberal were the mentions of the Blarney Stone and the black stuff and it seems to have been an oversight on our part that we didn't come up with a golfing priest to fill the pieces of visiting colour writers.

Surely that racing priest guy who gets a splash every Cheltenham could have found somebody with a collar and a low handicap to stand in?

The Ryder Cup has come and gone. The reality, a harmless-enough diversion in the end from the months of blizzarding hype, crass exaggeration and silly-bugger security measures we peasants have endured.

Our stern friend the weather prevented us letting our smugness quotient get into the dangerously overheated red level and we can go back now to vigorously milking Europe rather than treating the concept of Europeness as some sort of sacred cow that we feign reverence for. It's back to being bad Europeans and crafty Micks for two years.

At the end of the day, as we pundits like to say, we probably got the wrong outcome this weekend. At heart our interest in the Ryder Cup was self-interest. We want to sell the leprechaun and Blarney Stone guff to the next generation of wide-assed, check-trousered, gullible Americans.

News of our "price gouging with a twinkly smile" policy won't have encouraged an avalanche of bookings and the unfolding of the event in a manner which precluded any kind of cliffhanging ending yesterday will have had a forlorn influence on ratings Stateside. The last Ryder Cup - which played out at the right time of the day for the US networks - drew considerably less than 200 million viewers worldwide. By the time Americans were up and about yesterday the jig was up. Before 11am on the east coast of America is was possible to switch on and see Luke Donald being driven triumphantly around in a golf cart. Seeing the US being thrashed by Euroweenies is a minority entertainment choice in Bush's America.

Good win. Bad value for money. Already the greasy-till returns look more slender than the bug-eyed hype suggested they would be. The Anderson Economic Group study in conjunction with Amarach Consulting of Ireland earlier this month suggested the Ryder Cup would hoover us up $54 million in direct tourist dollars. The Government had been making room under the mattress for three times that amount of loot.

And who cares? If the usual bandits make less than the usual bandits expect, are we peasants any the poorer? Nope.

Listen, in the end amidst the hoopla and the hullaballoo you look to stay sane and you look for the human drama, the little shards of narrative which make the world's most overhyped and overhydrated event something manageable. Darren Clarke was unmissable viewing all weekend. Sometimes it felt voyeuristic. Sometimes it felt good and refreshing. In the end it was all about the guy who probably wondered if he should have been there.

Was there anyone who watched Darren Clarke this weekend who didn't put themselves in his position? Was there anyone who didn't judge him and then tell themselves they had no right to judge him? Was it too soon? Was it too much? Was he too engrossed in the golf? Was he engrossed enough? In the end we had no right to sit and wonder. Love and death are different imposters in all our lives.

Darren Clarke was there and the warmth of the reception from his fellow professionals was more meaningful than all the blather about war and gladiators and the battle of the titans. Samuel Ryder envisaged the event as a friendly end-of-season unwind for the professionals on either side of the Atlantic. There was a little in the warmth of the hugs which wrapped around Clarke all weekend which got us all back to that intention.

In a funny way, Clarke transcends Harrington and McGinley. He's Irish certainly, but he's more than that. He's box office. He's big time. The two Dubliners always seem like our scrappy underdogs out there on the Tour. Darren looks as if he just belongs on the fairways of the big time. Harrington and McGinley are approachable on the best of days and the worst of days. If Clarke is coming off the fairway after a bad round he's as likely to glower at you and thunder a warning to you to get out of his way as he is to stop and schmooze. We won't permit Harrington and McGinley to do flash. Darren gets away with it.

There is a thesis to be written someday on the culture of Northern Ireland's majority tradition as it reveals itself through its sportsmen. There is such a well of genius there but the well is fed by a dubious stream. Something in the water. Something in the blood. The guys are drawn towards the brilliant light but curiously unable to handle it.

Had poor George Best been a one-off the story would be understandable. He was the first. He went where nobody had gone before. It crushed him. But in the grandmaster flash tradition we've had Alex Higgins, Keith Gillespie, Eddie Irvine. Even Derek "The Doog" Dougan and Ronan Rafferty had their moments of excess.

Darren carries it off. The big stogie, the work to the hair, the 12-month tan, the plane, the Bentley or the Ferrari. Whatever. This column interviewed him years and years ago in Baltray when he was on the cusp of the pro life and he tipped the young local caddy so extravagantly at the end of the round the caddy had to query whether he was expected to provide change. Darren said he wasn't and what's more added, "That's sterling, son!"

Yesterday on the 16th green when Zach Johnson missed a putt which he had deliberated over for an age Darren was stripped of all the trappings. No cigar, windswept hair, emotionally naked in front of us all. It was a moment which said nothing about victory or defeat but spoke poetically of the life-affirming instinct to move on, blindly, painfully, stumblingly through good days and bad.

The glib, irritating, response to every death which throws a shadow on sport is that it puts "sport into perspective". We beat our chests and bow our heads and pretend that we ants in the grass understand perspective. Only a game, we murmur, as if in response to a psalm.

In The K Club with the rain finally stopped and the wet grass giving off a scent as distinctive as the smell of big money the last person we might have expected to teach us a lesson about humility and the simple duty of keeping on was bleached-blond, stogie-chomping Darren.

But he stood there momentarily and then submitted himself to a series of embraces and a tsunami wave of applause which rolled over him. Tears flowed. The small, sacred humanity of the gestures gave us one big and true moment out of an aggregation of shrill hype.

The perspective? Who cares about the Anderson Economic Group or Amárach Consulting?

We get up and we live for inniú, not amárach.

For a few moments Samuel Ryder stopped spinning in his grave. And then Darren downed that pint of stout in one go. Welcome back to the real world, folks.