Philip Reid finds Darren Clarke at ease with his attire but a little concerned about his overall game going into a testing weekend.

You've got to wonder what on earth is happening in this "he-man" world of the PGA Tour when Darren Clarke's attire rather than his golf game is the centre of conversation.

When the Northerner wore orange tartan trousers in the final round of the Bay Hill Invitational on Sunday, one American described him as resembling "an orange pop sickle stick". At least Phil Mickelson had the good grace not to criticise a fellow tour member's dress sense when asked his opinion yesterday on the eve of The Players Championship. "I can't criticise," said a good-humoured Phil, "because Amy (his wife) has got pairs just like them."

In fact, Clarke himself was in jocular mood about the clothes that his London tailor Tony Q'Aja has fashioned for him. "The worse comment I heard on Sunday was someone who said, 'it's not Halloween yet'. But do you want to see guys wearing khakis and white shirts or do you want to see somebody a little bit different?" responded Clarke good-naturedly of his new status as a fashion icon. "I think it brightens the game up, makes a little fun."

If only his golf game was generating as much talk on the range, Clarke describing his current form as "from average to poor". All of which is not entirely backed up by his actual results, which have seen him achieve three top-10 starts on the US Tour this season: tied-eighth in the Pebble Beach pro-am, tied-third in the Nissan Open, and tied-eighth in the Bay Hill Invitational.

Yet, if those results appear encouraging, Clarke is of the glass half-empty rather than the glass half-full demeanour heading into the Players. "I'm not being too hard on myself," observed Clarke. "I realise that I am not quite firing on all cylinders now. I'm not quite swinging the way I want to, and I'll just go out and play and hopefully add up the numbers at the end of the week and hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm not as hard on myself as I used to be."

The TPC at Sawgrass course has not proven to be one of Clarke's more fruitful hunting grounds in the past. In fact, he has failed to shoot a sub-70 score in the opening round in any of his seven appearances and has missed the cut on three occasions and he has been so disturbed by the state of his swing over the past few days that he has enlisted the help of Pete Cowen.

"He has given me a couple of things to have a little bit of a go at, so we'll see if I can manage to get the little ball before the big ball!"

Still, Clarke did manage to finish at Bay Hill with a 68, including being five-under for his last seven holes, to jump up to tied-eighth. "Yes, that was a good way to finish," he conceded, "but I am still not quite sure where I want to be with my swing. This week is so penalising that marginal shots can get severely punished here.

"There's such a fine line between shots going close and shots going to impossible positions where you can't get up and down. You know, you need that little bit of luck to go with you as well. If you don't have it, then you know you are going to beat your head against a brick wall here. I can't put my finger on it, but this year might be a little bit different because the course is playing softer."

However, Clarke did acknowledge that the recent form of the other Irish players was encouraging. "It's great. When you think about the size of us compared to other countries, I think we're doing pretty well . . . and I'd love to win again, I've just got to be patient. It's great we're all playing so well, but I don't think I have anything to prove. I just want to get back into the winner's circle." There are few better places than Sawgrass to do so.