Darren Clarke began the competition as our "most hired" player, making it into 30 per cent of our teams (5,980), whose managers had chosen to invest just under a quarter of their budgets in the Ulsterman. Then they sat back and waited for the money to roll in. And they waited. Ten weeks later Clarke had won them just £4,250 from the four tournaments he had played, missing the cut in three of them.
Well, you could hardly blame the 656 managers who had sacked him by the time he returned, refreshed, for the Benson and Hedges International in week 11, for losing their patience and switching their allegiances to Paul McGinley, as most of them did. (McGinley, who missed the first six weeks of the Golf Masters' season, now carries the tag of "most hired" player (5,515), the transfer stampede beginning after he finished joint second at the Spanish Open in week eight).
And how has Clarke fared since week 11? Depressingly well for his former employers: in just four tournaments he has earned £201,750, £100,000 of which he picked up for winning last weekend's English Open. Some of Tiger Woods' managers also suffered a crisis of confidence in their man, if not quite to the same degree: 41 have fired him since the start of the competition, and so missed out on his victory at the Memorial in Ohio on Sunday. Louis Cunningham, of Moate, Co Westmeath, stayed loyal to both Clarke and Woods and reaped the rewards at the weekend, when they led his Free Sub line-up to a weekly winning total of £293,867.
Free Sub is one of 246 teams to include both Clarke and Woods, so Louis' hopes of a four-ball rested on the form of Fredrik Lindgren, Kenny Perry, Frank Lickliter and Anders Forsbrand. He was beginning to feel confident on Sunday evening that he was Mount Julietbound, until "Lickliter dropped about three shots on the last two holes". "Up until then I thought I might have been in with a chance alright," he said.
But, fortunately for Louis, Lickliter's mini-collapse wasn't costly enough to allow Margaret Ryan of Malahide (who also had Clarke and Woods in her team) pip him to the prize. A four-ball to Louis, a polo shirt to Margaret who can consider herself desperately unlucky.
The biggest mover on the overall leader-board this week is Andrew Leonard of Blackrock, Co Dublin, who dropped out of the top 50 last week but has now jumped to eighth overall after Andrew's Animals 2 won £208,834 at the weekend (the 265th highest score of the week). Andrew's top earners were Stephen Leaney (who tied for third at the English Open) and Carlos Franco and Olin Browne (who also took a share of third place, at the Memorial).
David Maune, of Terenure, Dublin, increased his lead at the top of the overall leader-board by just under £4,000, to a very healthy £197,676. We shall resist jinxing Cremorne 1 by stressing just how a healthy a lead that is, but we're very tempted to shout "look behind you", because the Golf Master himself, reigning champion Paul Sheehan, has jumped from 32nd to a very menacing ninth place. Surely he couldn't? Could he? Last week we said something along the lines of "things can't get much worse for John Daly's employers". Our prediction was doing fine until the last hole in the first round of the Memorial when he six-putted from just eight feet (the highest score on the hole in the tournament's 24 years). He finished with an 82 and then went home.
