Here's a lesson in perseverance. In week 13 of last year's Golf Masters, one of John Quinn's teams amassed a grand total of u(pound sign) £390,994, from the Volvo PGA Championship and the Colonial in Texas. A fourball-clinching-sum, if ever there was one, our Dun Laoghaire manager believed.
Imagine his horror then when he opened his paper on the Thursday to discover that he was only second in the weekly leaderboard, having been beaten to the prize by £11,000 by Sean Cadogan of Portmarnock. Just to add to John's woes he had transferred a player out of the team the week before - and if he had left it untouched he, and not Sean, would have bagged the fourball. We sent John a polo shirt as consolation, but what he really wanted was a trip to Mount Juliet.
Then, two weeks ago, while most of his eight teams maintained their miserable start to the 1998 competition, his colleague in Bord Gais, John McCormack, leapt on to the overall leaderboard in 13th place. So, it was with considerable pleasure that we contacted our beleaguered manager on Tuesday afternoon to give him the good news that, thanks to his Quick Pick line-up, he was at last Mount-Juliet bound. "Yahoo! John McCormack? You are talking to the weekly winner of The Irish Times Golf Masters competition," he informed his colleague across the office.
Quick Pick's leading performers at the weekend were Davis Love, Glen Day and Fulton Allem, first, second and fifth, respectively, at the MCI Classic. Bob Estes brought in another £24,750, for his share of 14th place in South Carolina, while over at the Cannes Open Miguel Angel Jimenez, Fabrice Tarnaud and Padraig Harrington, who missed the cut, won just over £18,000 between them.
There may be 23 weeks still to go in the competition but it is hard to imagine anyone pipping Day to the title of Bargain Buy of the Year. Last year he won just £146,750 and promptly had his transfer rating reduced from £900,000 to £800,000. Now, after finishing runner-up in The Players Championship and MCI Classic, and third in the Freeport-McDermott, he is our second leading earner to date, after Mark Calcavecchia.
The American, who is a former European Tour member, has earned more in his last three tournaments ($638,938) than he won in the whole of 1996 and 1997 combined ($546,454) - an improvement in form that hasn't gone unnoticed by Golf Masters managers, 100 of whom have brought him in to their teams since the start of the competition (unfortunately five have transferred him out).
Brian Buttimer, of Churchtown, Dublin, swaps places with Kevin Barry this week, moving from second to first on the overall leaderboard, where he also has teams in ninth and tenth places. Furyk's Furies' top earner to date is, not surprisingly, Jim Furyk, followed by Scott Hoch, Bob Estes and Darren Clarke. Billy Mayfair, Mike Brisky and Brent Geiberger have also posted respectable returns so far. Robin McNaughton's R16 jumped from 46th to third overall this week, while our former leader Niamh Daly recovered from last week's traumas to re-enter the top 50 at number 33.
Week eight's tournaments are the Spanish Open in Barcelona and the Greater Greenboro Classic in North Carolina. (The Spanish Open and the Turespana Masters were swapped in the European Tour schedule after we printed our Golf Masters list of tournaments - both still count in the competition).
A word of warning to those managers still celebrating Mark O'Meara's Masters' success - after competing at the Greater Greensboro Classic he plans on taking a few weeks off, while Nick Faldo won't be action until the Colonial in Texas in week 12 of the competition.
