We must confess to feeling a tad alarmed when we heard that someone had left a message on Darren Clarke's mobile phone last Friday evening (after his steady but hardly spectacular second round of 72 at the English Open), calling him a "fat beep, beep, beep, beep", as he himself revealed. Quite how one of his 6,182 Golf Masters' managers had got their hands on his mobile number we weren't sure but you're a resourceful lot, when the mood takes you. Our suspicion was that one of you had finally had enough of your £3.3 million man's efforts and had decided to give him a piece of your mind.
It was with great relief, then, that we heard it was coach Butch Harmon who had chosen to "motivate" Clarke by suggesting he wasn't as trim as he should be - and clearly it worked a treat. If the rest of us fired rounds of 68 and 65 every time we received such abuse we'd be top of the money list by now.
So, things are definitely looking up for the 30 per cent of our teams that include Clarke. Having sat out six of our first 10 weeks and averaged just £14,854 in his first six tournaments, he's now won £205,500 in his last two, which isn't too bad at all. His managers, we reckon, will be urging Butch to give him another call just before he takes on Pebble Beach next week.
Not surprisingly this week's fourball winner, Peter McCaffrey of Oranmore, Co Galway, had Clarke on board his No Name Team (as opposed to No Team Name) and wasn't in the least bit perturbed when he began cutting into Michael Campbell's lead - because he has the New Zealander in his line-up too.
After opening rounds of 63 and 69 Campbell, the second most popular (behind Clarke) of our players, fell away with two 72s, so perhaps Butch accused of him of being a finely tuned athlete on Friday evening. Still, he ended up taking a share of second which, added to sizeable contributions from Gary Orr, Kirk Triplett, Tom Lehman and Wayne Riley (with another £1,500 thrown in to the team kitty by Andrew Oldcorn), was enough to win Peter a trip to Tulfarris, the third time he's won our weekly prize in the competition's six years. Good going.
Just like Dudley Hart at the Honda Classic back in week two, Tom Scherrer did his chances of securing his Golf Masters' card for next season no harm at all by winning his first PGA Tour title at the Kemper Open. Mind you, Rich Beem won for the first time, too, at Maryland last year and still didn't make it on to our list. (Maybe it was just as well - he defended his title by making bogeys on the last four holes of the second round to miss the cut by one).
Shigeki Maruyama's 894 bosses will be glad to know he's in the field for this week's Buick Classic, and will be living in hope that he maintains the form that saw him fire that round of 58 in qualifying for the US Open. Our European tournament this week is the Welsh Open where Paul McGinley, having changed his mind about trying to qualify for Pebble Beach, will be one of six Irish players in action. The other five are Philip Walton, Gary Murphy, Ronan Rafferty, Eamonn Darcy and Des Smyth, the Irish member of our new overall leaders, Port A, managed by Dermot Burke of Portmarnock.
