"I've only used £12.1 million of my budget so I've a very badly managed team," said David Maune, when we spoke with him yesterday. That's the same David Maune, of Terenure in Dublin, who leads the Golf Masters by £165,097 and whose Cremorne 1 team became the first to pass the £2 million-earning mark this week. We reckon the 19,556 teams trailing the leader wouldn't mind suffering from similarly poor management.
With double the regular prize-money up for grabs at the US Open last weekend there was always a chance one of David's nearest rivals, with the help of two or three top 10 finishes, would close the gap at the top but, as it turned out, Cremorne 1 extended their lead over Colomba Gavigan's second-placed Over The Top, by just under £20,000.
"Somebody seems to come good for me every week," said David, who reminded us that in week 15 he had had only three players in action and two of them, Retief Goosen and Tim Herron, finished runners-up in their respective tournaments. Herron was David's top earner again at Pinehurst, winning £100,000 for his sixth place finish, but, with the American featuring in all five of this week's leading teams (along with Goosen), it was Colin Montgomerie's cheque for £49,000 that was largely responsible for helping Cremorne 1 move further ahead of the chasing pack. Colomba Gavigan was relying on Miguel Angel Jimenez, Tom Lehman and Per Ulrik Johansson to cut David's lead, but Johansson missed the cut and neither Jimenez nor Lehman could manage a top 20 finish.
Hal Sutton's share of seventh helped Pat Corby's Blackbirds 10 move from fourth to third; Paul Sheehan rose one place from fifth, aided by Darren Clarke's £68,000 cheque, and Frank O'Hare climbed from eighth to fifth, with Clarke and Paul Goydos (joint 12th) two of his leading earners. There were three "new entries" in the top ten this week: Kevin Farrell jumped from 23rd to seventh (his KF 10 line-up includes Vijay Singh, joint third, Herron and Sutton) while John Davey (up from 35th to ninth) and David Randall (who re-entered the top 50 in 10th place) were two of 613 managers to have winner Payne Stewart in their line-ups. (Fortunately nobody transferred Stewart out of their team last week).
The only manager to earn more than £500,000 in week 16 was Derek Connolly of Ashford, Co Wicklow, whose Geriatrics belied their age to produce three top six and another two top 20 finishes at the US Open, to add to David Howell's share of 24th at the Moroccan Open (which proved to be a bit of a damp squib for Golf Masters' managers - only 10 of the players on our list finished in the top 50).
Between them Stewart, Steve Stricker and Herron earned Derek £410,000 of his winning total, with Scott Verplank and Jay Haas (and Howell) bringing it past the half-million mark. A fourball in Mount Juliet to Derek, who noted that he is the latest in quite a long line of Wicklow managers to experience success in the competition. (He is, too. We checked).
A big thank you to our old friend Pat Doyle for his lovely postcard from Paris, in which he pleads with us to have a go at his by now legendary Carlow Scallion Eaters' line-up, so that he may collect his third polo shirt in three Golf Masters' seasons. No problem Pat (they're useless, as usual) - there's a 1999 polo shirt in the post.
Speaking of polo shirts, if we had 2,121 to spare we'd give one to every employer of Jose Maria Olazabal (broken bone in the fifth metacarpal on his right hand after altercation with hotel wall) and John Daly (where do you start?) but we don't, so we can only offer you better luck at week 17's tournaments, the European Grand Prix and the Buick Classic.
