Well, considering the likes of Greg Norman, Lee Janzen, Tom Lehman and Bay Hill Invitational winner Tim Herron - over £9 million worth of Golf Masters' talent - missed the cut in our first bonus tournament of the year, Miguel Angel Jimenez's share of 38th place at the Players' Championship wasn't bad going. A not-to-be-sniffed-at £10,125 was the Spaniard's reward for his weekend's work. But that was precisely £139,875 less than David Duval picked up for winning the tournament. Aidan from Clogherhead? What can we say? Cruel and all as we are, we have no intention of revealing that Aidan was the only manager in the entire competition to transfer Duval out of his team on the eve of the Players' Championship (to replace him with Jimenez). That would be a heartless thing to do. And we certainly wouldn't rub it in by disclosing that he also brought Lehman and Herron into his line-up, just in time to collect their combined earnings of £1,500 in Florida. (Polo shirt on its way).
But Aidan wasn't the only manager to lose patience with Duval after he failed to appear at the Doral Ryder Open, Honda Classic and Bay Hill Invitational, the first three US tournaments of the Golf Masters' season. Five more sacked the new world number one (hello Louis, Kevin, Christy and No Name Given) in weeks two and three, but one of them, Tom Desmond of Raheny, re-hired Duval just in time to benefit from his win. Tom was one of 1,232 managers to have Duval in their line-up at the weekend, along with Simon Sheridan of Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, a first year student at UCC. Simon, though, is this week's four-ball winner at Mount Juliet after three more of his Hookers team - Mark James, David Howell and Retief Goosen - finished second, third and joint fourth, respectively, at the Madeira Island Open. Pat Mullarkey of Carlow can consider himself desperately unlucky to have missed out on a four-ball, by just under £7,000, but he at least has the consolation of seeing Shekels - whose big earners this week were Nick Price (third in Florida), Hal Sutton (joint fourth), Mark James and Padraig Harrington (tied for fourth in Madeira) - going top of the overall leader-board this week. Nick Faldo's employers could do with a bit of cheering up these days.
The 1,050 of you who are standing by him (seven of you sacked him since the start of the competition) might be pleasantly surprised to know that even though he won no "real" money at the Players' Championship, after his fourth round disqualification, he at least collected £2,250 Golf Masters' pounds. That's because one of our rules states that a player who makes the cut will be guaranteed £1,500 (or £2,250 in a bonus tournament). So, even though Corey Pavin's well-intentioned advice resulted in an early bath for Faldo, he at least held on to his Golf Masters' money.
A big thank-you to 13-year-old Barry McStay of Friarstown, Co Kildare, for his much appreciated letter to Golf Masters' HQ. Barry, a first year boarder at Clongowes Wood College, was our overall leader in week two but, as he predicted, has slipped to 32nd because he has just one American, Bob Estes, in his line-up - and weeks' three and four certainly didn't favour those teams with a European bias. Your time might come again though, Barry - from week seven the European Tour will liven up and there are five bonus tournaments and one double-money tournament still to come this side of the Atlantic. So, Casa Do Lago 25 aren't finished yet.
We're not so sure about the Buccaneers' prospects, though. "In week one they only earned £1,500 - and that was with three players actually counting," wrote Richard Evans, from Athlone. "They're not fairing nearly as well as our now famous rugby team of the same name," he added.
"All I can do is keep shouting `C'mon the Buccs' for both teams - a polo shirt would keep my spirits up." After your 36-3 defeat by Shannon last weekend, how could we refuse?
