As John McHenry casts an eye about in search of the sponsors' invitations he needs in order to bag enough prize money to secure his European Tour card next season, the 34-year-old Corkman might well reflect on how much better off he'd be if his Golf Masters winnings and our requirements for a tour card were the ones he had to meet.

McHenry won just short of £54,000 at Druid's Glen last weekend which, he reckons, leaves him just one cut away from recapturing his card for next season. But the £97,500 he notched up in Gold Masters money is well above the £50,000 mark at which we generally ponder removing players from our 240-strong list for the following campaign.

Last year 25 players failed to make that much on our tour and most, along with those who had retired, moved on to other tours or dropped their clubs down the nearest well after a particularly bad round secured their exit.

The cut looks likely to be somewhere close to the same figure this October with 53 players still the wrong side of the £50,000 mark after 18 weeks, compared to 57 at the same stage of the competition 12 months ago - a more significant improvement is the fact that just one player (Brad Bryant) has still to score this season, compared to four last July.

At the top end of our list the year on year figures are also remarkably similar with 12 players having passed the £400,000 in the money list this week, a drop of just two on 1997. All of which would suggest that our managers have developed a slightly keener eye for team selections as the current total of our overall leader, Robert Sinnott, is more than £150,000 up on Dr Edward Staunton's total at the same stage last year, an improvement reflected throughout the top 50 with all of this year's list having already having passed the £2 million mark, compared to £1,856,625 for Roger Kelleher, who occupied 50th position then.