There was mounting tension in the O'Connor household in Donacarney, Co Meath, over the weekend as Michael and Joseph O'Connor watched the closing stages of the PGA Championship at Wentworth. Joint managerial ventures are all very well, but when your 12-year-old son starts making unilateral decisions regarding transfer policy the cracks can begin to show in the partnership.
When he decides to bring Tiger Woods in to one of your teams, without telling you, that's bad enough. But when the man he's just fired, Colin Montgomerie, goes and wins the PGA Championship and 150,000 Golf Masters' pounds it can leave you a broken man. "When he said he'd got rid of Monty, without telling me, I gave him terrible abuse," admitted Michael. "And then when Monty won . . ." Your father-son relationship broke down? "You could say that, yes."
Fortunately, while Michael and Joseph were busy "discussing" the Monty Disaster, another of their entries, Joey's Dream Team 1, were busy winning the pair of them a four-ball in Mount Juliet and a couple of polo shirts.
It was news that left Michael a little stunned and had Joseph doing his Michael Flatley impression in the hall when we phoned them on Tuesday. "He's doing Riverdance here beside me," said Michael of his "joint Golf Masters' selector". Ernie Els and Patrik Sjoland, who took a share of second at Wentworth, and Colonial winner Tom Watson were Joey's Dream Team's big earners at the weekend, with Peter Lonard (who tied for fifth) and top 50 finishes by Tony Johnstone and Thomas Gogele at PGA Championship bringing their winning score up to £398,575.
Unfortunately it will be two months before the O'Connor team, who finished sixth overall in the Golf Masters two years ago, can head for Mount Juliet, the length of time "golf mad" Joseph needs to recover from a chipped bone in his knee, an injury he picked up playing football. Another joint venture that's going very nicely is that of Dublin brothers Tony and Brian Murnaghan, whose Bargain Basement line-up went top of our overall leaderboard this week - on the day that Tony (a four-ball winner from last year) and his wife, Fionnuala, celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. Kevin Barry slips to second place, but a gap of over £100,000 has now opened between him and third placed Paul Sheehan. Peter Maher's Masters 4 move up from 10th to fourth, while Michael Clooney's Early Birds and Brendan Hill's Beachboys 2 climb in to the top 10 after a good weekend. The highest new entry of the week is Conor McAlister whose Pork Chops came from nowhere to appear in 14th place.
Montgomerie's victory at Wentworth added £150,000 to the accounts of his 1,356 managers, while Watson's success at the Colonial benefited 1,760 teams. The "most hired" player in the competition, Padraig Harrington, picked up his biggest cheque of the 1998 Golf Masters (£45,000) for his 5,021 employers.
The average earnings this week were £122,853, bringing the overall average score in the competition to £852,145.
Mark McNulty's 919 managers would have been overcome with emotion at the sight of their Zimbabwean recruit getting off the mark this week, with a share of 37th place at Wentworth. Following Richard Green's first appearance of the season in week 11 at the International Open, where he missed the cut, Brad Bryant is now our only player yet to break his duck. So to week 13, where the action takes place at the Deutsche Bank Open in Hamburg and the Memorial in Dublin, Ohio, where 20 of the world's top 21 money earners, including Fred Couples, Tiger Woods, David Duval, Justin Leonard and Phil Mickelson, are scheduled to play. US Masters winner Mark O'Meara is in the field for the Deutsche Bank Open.
