Take a bow Gregory Thomas Kraft, the top value-for-money buy in the 1999 Golf Masters, with just two weeks to go. And if he consolidates his position at the head of the `bargain buy' list with a good showing at this week's Canadian Open he'll do Roger Mullarkey's chances of nicking our £10,000 first prize no harm at all.
Kraft finished 94th on the 1998 money list on the American Tour, having only made the cut in 18 of 35 tournaments and failing to secure even one top 10 finish, thus accounting for his modest transfer value this year of just £600,000.
But two second place finishes this season - at the Doral-Ryder Open in March and the Colonial in May - have helped him to Golf Masters' earnings of £262,691 so far, winning his managers almost 48 pence for every pound they spent on him. At registration time Kraft made it into just 156 teams but, since then, another 1,043 managers have hired his services.
At the other end of the scale, excluding Ronan Rafferty and Matthew Goggin who have yet to make an appearance in a Golf Masters' tournament this season, (Rafferty has been ruled out through injury while Goggin has been playing on the Nike Tour in America) Gordon Brand Jnr `heads' the worst value for money list, having missed the cut in the only three tournaments he has played.
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