Being in contention for the Golf Masters' £10,000 first prize in the 30th and final week of the competition is all very well, but if you knew what Paul Sheehan and Susan Coleman went through last weekend you'd probably settle for mid-leaderboard obscurity, for the sake of your health (and sanity) at least.

Hard to believe, but after 30 weeks the battle for that first prize went down to one player's final round at the very last tournament of the Golf Masters' year - the Texas Open.

By then Susan and Paul's closest challengers had dropped out of the race. Any hopes Brian Fitzpatrick (fifth last week) and Niall Murray (sixth) had of closing the gap on the teams above them were all but scuppered when Thomas Bjorn withdrew from the German Masters, before it had even begun.

Robbie Canning, in fourth, was probably tempted to wave a white flag when Scott Hoch missed the cut in Cologne, and was finally forced to surrender his top three ambitions when Jean Van de Velde (joint eighth) and John Huston (joint 43rd) failed to win enough between them to allow him catch up with Paul Sheehan's third placed team. And third was what Pauly 7 had to settle for once David Howell, their key player, missed the cut in Germany.

So, it proved to be a straight battle between Susan's Winners and Paul's second placed team, Paul 8. By the end of the German Masters Paul had halved Susan's lead, and was trailing by just £8,287 - all of which meant he needed Bob Estes to finish in the top 40 in Texas if he was to pip his fellow Dubliner to the first prize.

Susan had been let down badly by her line-up in Germany, with her three key players winning a miserable £4,714 between them - Katsuyoshi Tomori missed the cut, Sam Torrance finished outside the top 50 and Mathias Gronberg could only tie for 48th. Miguel Angel Jimenez and Darren Clarke's scores had no bearing on her contest with Paul, because both players also featured in his line-up.

Costantino Rocca proved to be Paul's saviour at the German Masters, the Italian winning £11,500 for his share of 28th place, making up for Peter Baker's contribution to the cause of just £1,500. So, it was all down to Estes. "I hope Paul has more nails left than I have . . . talk about leaving it till the last," said an exhausted Susan, when we spoke to her after her weekend ordeal. Susan kept track of her team's fate while she was in Spain on holidays, returning home on Sunday evening in time to watch the closing stages of the Texas Open on television.

Paul, meanwhile, was having trouble getting any news of Estes' final round so he went down to the house of his friend Anthony Hynes (a Sky Sports' subscriber - the channel was showing the Texas Open live), only to discover his "telly was on the blink".

To cut an agonisingly long story (for Paul) short Anthony had a brainwave - he rang the course in Texas to find out where Estes finished.

"I was just listening to his side of the conversation and I heard him say `what score did Estes have'," said Paul. "And then he says `oh NOOOO' . . . and I said, `Oh MY GAAAWD'. . . then he says, "oh REALLY? Brilliant!" The guy on the phone had told him Estes finished on four under . . . but that was just his score for the day - his overall score was 12 under, and that's all I needed to know." (Estes' final round of 68 meant Paul had beaten Susan by £17,825).

And there we were at Golf Masters' HQ thinking, if only Bob Estes knew how happy he'd made at least one resident of Dublin. Little did we know, before Paul told us on Monday, that Estes had had the honour of chatting to the 1998 Golf Masters' winner on the telephone on Sunday night. "It was so simple, it never crossed my mind that you could ring these guys up," said Paul. "He was very nice. He could have told me to feck off . . . `who is this crackpot?' . . . but he didn't."

So, hearty congratulations to Paul, three of whose 38 teams (an average entry, by this year's standards) finished in the top six - he wins £10,500 for his first and third finishes.

Susan Coleman had precisely 37 fewer entries, and managed to finish second (winning £1,000) on her Golf Masters' debut. "Now I know how it works, I might win it next year," she said. "I'm just delighted to have done so well. I couldn't believe it when I made the top 50 - at that stage the most I aspired to was to finish in the top 10, so I'm thrilled and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was great fun."

Congratulations, too, to Michael Delaney of Portlaoise, who won his third fourball of the year with Dollar Signs.