With four of his seven players putting their feet up last week there was always the danger that the BMW International Open and Travelers Championship would prove to be calamitous tournaments for our overall leader, Eamon Murray. Well, they didn't quite turn out to be ruinous, with Justin Rose in Connecticut and Christian Cevaer in Munich winning a reasonably respectable 44,000 between them (which is more than can be said for Robert-Jan Derksen's €500), but still, Eamon has seen his lead cut at the top of that overall leaderboard by almost 100,000, his advantage over Frank Hastings now down to €51,801.
Not that Eamon was the only one of our top 10 from last week to have an unrewarding time of it, indeed the 10 team's average score was a modest enough 74,898. Three line-ups fared even worse than Eamo's Heroes, with Del's Diggers' manager Michael Delaney having one of those weeks that probably left him tempted to hand in his resignation. With five players in action Michael was entitled to anticipate a fruitful weekend's work - but three of them missed the cut and the two that survived it, Padraig Harrington and David Higgins, won just 4,375 between them. Michael, then, had to settle for 6,333rd on our weekly leaderboard, falling from fifth to ninth overall.
While Tony Murnaghan's Buckaroos were another team to have a miserable week 12 - all seven players were in action, but only won €10,250 combined - his Wayward Lads and King's Ransom line-ups provided considerable consolation, the first jumping from 17th to sixth, thanks largely to the efforts of Jose-Filipe Lima and Raphael Jacquelin, the second from 20th to 10th, Bernard Langer and Maarten Lafeber their top performers.
If we had a 'transfer of the week' award we'd be presenting it to Gearoid Fitzmaurice who appeared to be aware that Tiger Woods was taking some paternity leave - including missing this week's Buick Open - and replaced him with Vijay Singh, who promptly won 60,000 for finishing fourth at the Travelers Championship. The sting in the tail, though, for Gearoid is that injury has also seen Singh withdraw from the Buick and he may not be back in action until the British Open (July 19th- 22nd).
Hats off, too, to the 20 managers who hired Niclas Fasth just in time for his BMW International Open victory, and the five who transferred Hunter Mahan in on the eve of his first PGA Tour win at the Travelers Championship, where he beat Jay Williamson in a play-off. "Knowing that you can win and actually winning are two different things," he said, a sentiment that would, we reckon, be echoed by many a Golf Masters manager.
On we go to the French Open and the Tiger-less and Vijay-less Buick Open, where the 2003 winner, Jim Furyk, might well attract some frenzied transfer activity now that he's the main man in the field.
Meanwhile, those managers still celebrating Angel Cabrera's US Open triumph might have been peeved to learn he'd withdrawn from the French Open, but consoled by the news that he will play in the Smurfit Kappa European Open at the K Club (July 5th-8th), our next bonus tournament. As ever with the life of a Golf Masters' manager, it's swings and roundabouts.
