Darren Clarke is banking on experience trumping youth in the PGA Grand Slam.The Northern Irishman is the old man of next week’s quartet, and at 43 is 16 years older than Charl Schwartzel and 21 years older than Rory McIlroy, who had only just learnt to walk when Clarke first turned professional in 1990.Ages aside, all four, with Keegan Bradley making up the group, have something in common and enter the tournament at Port Royal Golf Course as first time major winners.“I am the oldest in the field by some distance so there is an extra incentive to show these talented young pups the value of experience,” said Clarke.The Open champion certainly has plenty of that, and while his first major triumph came later in his career than many expected it followed some noteable highs, including a dominant Ryder Cup career, multiple European Tour wins, and in 2003 Clarke became only the second player, alongside Tiger Woods, to win two World Golf Championship titles.However, prior to winning the Iberdrola Open in Majorca earlier this year Clarke hadn’t won since the KLM Open in 2008 and he said that the frustration had begun to get to him.“There were times when I would be asking myself ‘what am I doing here?’,” said Clarke. “Golf is as much a mind game as a technical discipline. I was struggling a bit earlier in the summer and did some work with the great sports psychologist Bob Rotella.“A couple of weeks later I won in Majorca. At the Open I didn’t know when a putt would drop so at the start of the week Bob and I got together and hey presto I ended up with the Claret Jug. It sounds simple but sometimes you just need to find the trigger and everything turns around. That’s golf.”Winning The Open brought its own challenges, especially in terms of motivation with Clarke acknowledging that he’d ‘done what I always wanted to do’.“What else is there to do?,” said Clarke. “I’ve managed to win the tournament I’ve wanted to win from when I first started playing golf, the biggest and best tournament in the world. My difficulty since has been assessing and fixing some goals.”The chance to play in a sixth Ryder Cup has gone someway to solving that problem and Clarke has also set his sights on returning to Bermuda next year with another major to his name.“I don’t think there is a man alive who would consider coming to Bermuda a chore,” said Clarke. “It gives me great pleasure to compete as the Open Champion.“Winning the Open Championship brings with it certain privileges, one of which is making scheduling an awful lot easier. We pretty much know where we are heading next year. Hopefully it will include a few days in Bermuda next October.”As with all other major winners Clarke has found that his life has changed off course more than it has on it.“There was an adjustment but a very pleasant one,” he said. “Clearly winning a major takes you to a rarified level as a golfer and I have enjoyed making the leap. It doesn’t change anything on a Thursday morning, however. There are still 150 golfers all with a chance to win.”