Sand not a hazard to true love for golfer Clarke

BRITISH Open champion Darren Clarke enjoyed a memorable day in the sun when he married fiancee Alison Campbell in a small beach wedding in the Bahamas.

The 43-year-old Northern Irishman made the announcement on his personal website, revealing that former US Open champion Graeme McDowell – who introduced the couple to each other through a blind date – was present at the ceremony along with members of Mr Clarke’s family and agent Chubby Chandler.

The site said that the “top secret plans” for the wedding had been kept tightly under wraps leading up to the ceremony at Abaco Club, a beachfront golf and hotel resort in the Bahamas, where the couple have a home.

The golfer described the event as a “pretty stunning occasion, as well as a very happy one”.

After the vows Mr Chandler tweeted a photograph of the happy couple.

He posted: “Darren and Alison Clarke getting married on a spectacular day at the Abaco Club.”

Later the agent added a reference to the match-making of Mr McDowell: “One of the nice things is that G-Mac introduced DC and new wife on a blind date and they have made it today, seen the job through to the end!”

Their short honeymoon will be spent at Abaco before Clarke heads off to Korea to play in the Ballantine’s Championship next week, while his new wife returns to the helm of her Belfast-based business, the Alison Campbell Model Agency.

The golfer has previously credited his partner with putting his life “back on track” following the death of his first wife Heather in 2006 after a battle with breast cancer.

Not long after the pair met, he moved his sons back to Northern Ireland to set up home again.

Clarke became one of the British Open’s most popular champions when he won at Royal St George’s last year, as well as being the oldest player to win an Open since 1967.