"Now that you are on the Tour what are your goals," Dean Wilson, the 2003 Golf Masters (and PGA Tour) rookie, was asked recently
"I don't have any goals," he replied, which made us wonder was such a lack of ambition the reason why he was the least popular player at registration time this year. Even if he'd said "my target is to win back at least a quarter of the A1.8 million my Golf Masters' managers spent on me" he might have attracted the interest of more than 28 of you, but no.
Dean 'The Machine' Wilson, as the 33-year-old from Hawaii is known to his friends, failed, then, to make it in to 14,206 of our line-ups - and we have another theory that might explain why he proved to be so unpopular. On the official USPGA website Wilson lists his interests as "fishing", and nothing else. A nice, serene hobby, with a low 'injury-risk' factor. Twenty-eight of you picked up on this and were sufficiently reassured to hire him. The rest of you? You probably had a look at an Hawaii golf website where Wilson confessed to being in to "all extreme sports - surfing, cliff skiing, sky diving, bull-riding (both real and mechanical) and running with the bulls".
And did you then, perhaps, discover that there exists a professional bull-rider (like the "other" Dean, he turned pro in 1992) in Stephenville, Texas, by the name of Dean 'Yankee' Wilson. who lists his special interests as "raising bucking bulls" and figured that they have to be one and the same? If you did, the final straw might have been when you learnt that 'Yankee' broke his jaw and shoulder while bucking in 2000 - and it was then that you decided that this rookie was likely to spend the bulk of the 2003 Golf Masters season in casualty? Perhaps. Whatever the truth 'The Machine' has dethroned Jean Hugo as the Golf Masters "Most Unwanted Man'.
The most popular? How many guesses do you need? When we were informed that Tiger Woods had risen from last year's position of 12th, on the most wanted list, to first we said: "That's mad, surely he's due a bad year." And then his managers will really regret spending 6.5 million of their budgets on him and quess what? He's just won the Bay Hill Invitational by 11 strokes?" You know best, evidently.
MOST POPULAR
Player Value Teams
1, Tiger Woods 6.5 2,889
2, Peter Lawrie 0.7 2,756
3, P Harrington 4.7 2,656
4, Hal Sutton 0.5 2,534
5, Darren Clarke 3.8 2,525
6, Duffy Waldorf 0.5 2,151
7, Paul McGinley 2.5 2,091
8, Damien McGrane 0.5 1,869
9, John Bickerton 0.5 1,847
10, Gary Murphy 0.7 1,800
LEAST POPULAR
Player Value Teams
1, Dean Wilson 1.8 28
2, Craig Parry 3.0 30
3, R S Johnson 1.1 32
3, Toru Taniguchi 2.4 32
5, Anthony Wall 1.6 39
6, Joey Sindelar 1.5 41
6, Jeff Sluman 3.0 41
8, Paul Lawrie 3.2 49
9, Kenny Perry 3.1 50
