Twenty-seven weeks gone, only three to go in the 1998 Golf Masters. "Only," asks Paul Sheehan, the manager of our first, third and fourth-placed teams. "What do mean only?" Ah yes, life at the top of the overall leaderboard, with just six tournaments left in the competition, is, Paul can confirm, stomach-churningly, nerve-wrackingly, excruciatingly "tense', in a word.
Our Dublin manager's nerves were eased a little by his teams' displays at last week's Greater Milwaukee Open and European Masters. Pauly 7, seventh last week, was his top earning line-up, winning £240,000 (all but £1,000 of the total coming from Steve Stricker, Darren Clarke, Costantino Rocca and Sam Torrance) and moved up to fourth, while Paul 1 held on to third place with a team total of £158,000 (Stricker and Clarke were, again, the top performers).
Despite Billy Mayfair and Peter Baker taking the week off, and disappointing form from Bob Estes (missed the cut) and Scott Hoch (tied for 47th) in Milwaukee, Paul 8 not only retained their lead at the top of the overall leaderboard, for the second week running, but they extended it by just under £32,000 to £39,078. Stricker and Clarke came to the rescue for the leaders, finishing second and third in Milwaukee and Switzerland, respectively, while the team's most recent recruit, Miguel Angel Jimenez, chipped in with a joint seventh placing at the European Masters. The Spaniard has won just over £80,000 for Paul in the two weeks since he replaced David Carter in Paul 8's line-up - in the same period Carter won just £9,750, missing the cut last week.
Paul still has two transfers left for his leading line-up and he may be tempted to use them for this week's British Masters, the final bonus tournament of the year.
Niall Murray, who has moved from fourth to second, has no such decisions to make, having used up his final two transfers for Seven Up last week. Out went Tony Johnstone and Jim Furyk, neither of whom played in week 27, and in came Estes and Jose-Maria Olazabal, who won just £2,000 between them. Niall will hope his switches bear more fruit in the final three weeks, although he could probably do without hearing that Estes is not in this week's Canadian Open. Better news for Niall, though, is that the four Seven Up players who are not in any of Paul Sheehan's top three teams - Paul Azinger (Canadian Open), Olazabal, Mathias Gronberg and Thomas Bjorn (British Masters) will all be in action this week. Just over £90,000 behind Paul 8 is Galway's Robbie Canning, who moved up a place to fifth this week. The whereabouts of Ansbacher Accounts 1-98 are unknown (tribunal pending, probably), but number 99 is doing very nicely, having risen 45 places in the last month alone.
Robbie has Stricker, Clarke, Jimenez and Hoch in common with Paul 8, which means he's depending on John Huston, Payne Stewart and Jean Van de Velde to close the gap on the leaders (unless Paul uses those transfers). Huston and Stewart, however, will not be in action in Ontario this week, so should Van de Velde have a successful British Masters the cheering in Loughrea will probably carry all the way to the Forest of Arden.
Michael Delaney's Two Pair might not have done enough this year to put him amongst the contenders for first prize, but they did, at least, win their Portlaoise manager his second fourball in three months by finishing top scorers in week 27. Michael, whose Furyk Fury line-up won him a trip to Mount Juliet back in week 15, had the top three at the European Masters (Sven Struver, Patrik Sjoland and Clarke) and Stricker, while Retief Goosen and Gary Evans (who tied for 20th and 61st, respectively, in Switzerland) brought the team total to £349,000, putting Two Pair just ahead of Pierce Hevey of Enfield, Co Meath, and another of Michael's teams, Plenty Strong.
