Cink's dwindling band of fans amply rewarded

OF COURSE it’s not really personal but it’s a fair bet that just about every one of this season’s 5,895 Golf Masters managers wished Stewart Cink hadn’t won last Sunday’s play-off for the British Open.

For starters, only 64 of them employed Cink at the start of the season and in the intervening 14 weeks, 26 of those had decided that there were better ways to spend €4.5 million of their €12.5 million budget. That seemed a fair assessment before events at Turnberry as a tied-eighth finish at The Memorial was by a considerable distance Cink’s best performance in any of our tournaments.

Compared to the efforts of our two other €4.5 million-rated players, that seemed lame indeed. Martin Kaymer could boast victories in both the French and Scottish Opens and Paul Casey’s win in the BMW Championship had earned his employers in one week almost twice what Cink had managed all season.

Reasons to buy Cink on the eve of the British Open were thus few and far between and as nobody did so he was carrying the hopes of only 38 managers. The top ranked of those was Dualta Woods who was lying in 296th position with his dwoods2 selection. When we reached Dualta by phone he was indeed in a happy place but not because his team had shot up to 63rd thanks to the €200,000 won by Cink at Turnberry.

No, he was happy because he had just finished a round of golf in sunny Spain and was busy sorting out ice-cream for his kids. Sentiment rarely overrides finance in Golf Masters but even Dualta was a little unhappy about Cink’s success and admitted he really would have liked to see Tom Watson win that play-off or, better still, hole his putt on the 72nd to secure victory in regulation.

The Tour Commissioner is going to have to review that rule about players losing their Golf Masters cards at the age of 55 as Watson’s non-appearance on our roster meant that his €160,000 second-place money went nowhere.

There was way more interest in players with “Wood” than Watson in their surname – many managers focused on the performances of Tiger Woods, Lee Westwood and Chris Wood.

Tiger had 25 new employers for the British Open, bringing the total to 692, but he let them all down with a missed cut. Lee’s 99 bosses must surely have groaned when he bogeyed three of the last four holes while, based on his performance at Birkdale last year and his bargain €0.7 million price tag, Chris was one of most popular recruits in last week’s transfer window.

Eighty six managers took him on (new total 283) and happiest of them all must have been Linda Kelly, who used Wood to replace the idle JJ Henry in her Seven Amigos selection. Wood’s €130,000 for tied-third helped the Amigos rise 11 places to fifth overall.

James Walsh tops the standings for the fourth week in a row with Tractors 7 but it was a shocker for Paraic O’Neill’s Magnificent Seven 5 who only scored €7,000 to drop from second to third, with Julie’s Joys managed by Tricia Clear now closest to the Tractors.

golfmasters@irishtimes.com