Yes, honesty is a highly commendable quality, but whether it's the best policy when it results in severe damage being done to your hopes of clinching a place on the European Ryder Cup team is extremely doubtful.

And, much more importantly, what good is honesty when its effect is to dent the hopes of our fifth-placed manager from closing the gap between himself and the top four and also making it to the Ryder Cup, as a spectator?

We are certain that our Dundrum manager, Tom Higgins, was highly impressed with Andrew Oldcorn's display of sportsmanship when he disqualified himself from the Scandinavian Masters upon discovering, midway through his third round, that he had taken an incorrect drop in the first round. Well, highly impressed through clenched teeth and dewy eyes.

If Oldcorn had even infringed the rules in the third round we could at least have given him £1,500 for making the cut, but in the end he (and Tom and his 873 other managers) collected nothing because the offence had taken place in the first round. So, Oldcorn and Tom's Ryder Cup ambitions were wounded, perhaps mortally.

And just to complete Tom's exasperating weekend, the Karlsson boys, Olle and Robert, won precisely £2,000 between them at the Scandinavian Masters when Tom might have expected that playing on their home patch would have inspired them to greater things.

Just about the only consolation we can offer Tom is to point out that at least he didn't have Malcolm MacKenzie in his team too. Like Oldcorn, MacKenzie thought he had made the cut in Sweden, only to be approached by the tournament director on the Saturday to be told that he had broken the rules in the second round (his ball landed on a spectator's jacket and instead of taking a drop he placed it on the ground, a no-no). So, how much did MacKenzie's 253 managers win? Not a penny.