ONE PROBLEM with managing dozens, if not hundreds, of Golf Masters teams is that you nearly need to take a day off work every week to plot your course for the rest of the season and sort out your transfers.
On the other hand, everyone who enters only one team and ignores the market altogether has very little chance of winning our top overall prize of €20,000.
It can be done but it needs an inspired initial selection and a fair dollop of good luck.
Patrick Curley from Claremorris went for the middle ground and entered 10 teams, with the best of them, PC 1, currently lying 38th overall.
With only nine others to keep an eye on, he picked up on the under-performance of Haze 6 who until last week were his lowest scorers way down in 8,714th.
So desperate was the situation that Curley, a nine-handicap member of Ballyhaunis, decided to break one of the axioms of Golf Masters management and transfer out two players who were in action for the week.
Nick O'Hern and David Howell got the chop and Miguel Angel Jimenez and Bart Bryant hooked up with Paul McGinley, Damien McGrane, Lucas Glover, Oliver Wilson and Ross Fisher. The transfers alone provided a net gain of €151,250 and the team more than doubled their earnings for the season as they topped the weekly leaderboard with €389,625.
Having finished second in a weekly competition last year, that was great news for Patrick whose golfing parents, Pat and Kathleen, will be among his guests when he takes up his prize of a fourball at Druids Heath.
This week's counting events are the Wales Open and the Memorial Tournament.
e-mail: golfmasters@irish-times.ie
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