Scoring average reaches a new low

Last week we awarded a polo shirt to our Dublin manager Mark Quinn, as consolation for Watcher of the Skies' miserable start to the competition - they were the only line-up to fail to win a single pound after the first two weeks. Well, if we'd phoned him on Sunday night he would have been quite entitled to go "na, na, na, na, na - oh ye of little faith".

Yes, four of Mark's team finally showed up for action at the Bay Hill Invitational in Orlando and, between them, won £101,613 (£70,000 contributed by third-placed Davis Love) - the 636th highest score of the week, enough to catapult Mark from 19,488th to 10,234th overall. From zero to hero, as they say.

We mention this only to cheer up the 676 of you who scored nothing at the weekend; the 888 who won just £500 and the 5,407 who won less than £5,000 - take Mark's word for it, things can only get better.

In fact the average score this week was as low as we can remember, just £29,220. Some of you, who, we suspect, had line-ups weighted with European Tour players, rang the help-line tearfully wondering what had happened the Moroccan Open - hang in there, it was switched to mid-June (week 16) so you might make up lost ground then.

The same managers are unlikely to make much progress over the next three weeks, however, when there will be just one European tournament compared to three in America - including the US Masters, which has double the regular prize money.

One of the more popular and successful managerial strategies over the last couple of years has been to start off with an American bias in your team and then use your transfers to bring in more European players after the first six or seven weeks of the competition. Of course if the strategy doesn't work you could be left with 23 or 24 weeks of tournaments and no transfers left to alter your ailing line-up. Decisions, decisions. Who'd be a manager, eh?

The overall average score after three weeks is £114,898, over £300,000 behind our new leader David Maune, whose Cremorne 5 didn't even feature in the top 50 last week. The team's top scorer at the weekend was Robert Damron, who picked up the biggest cheque of his career with a fourth-place finish at his home town tournament.

While 477 of our managers were willing Tom Lehman to victory in the play-off against Tim Herron, who appears in 266 teams, Mark Cahill (second on the weekly board), Gerry Murphy (fifth), Gerry Sweetman, Michael Delaney and Paul Dowling (all joint 19th) weren't too pushed about who won - they were the only managers to have both players in their teams. Unfortunately for them the rest of their line-ups didn't do quite enough to outscore Patrick Duffy of Rathfarnham - this week's winner of a four-ball in Mount Juliet.

Herron's birdie (absolutely no pun intended) on the second play-off hole against Lehman gave him his third USPGA victory in four years and clinched first place on the weekly leader-board for `Patrick's Golf Dream'.

Bob Estes and Craig Parry's share of fifth place (with four other players) had earlier contributed £88,000 to the team's score while Payne Stewart and Robert Allenby chipped in with another £54,000 for their joint 13th finish. Jerry Kelly's £500 cheque, for missing the cut, brought the team total to £242,500, moving them up to 18th on the overall leader-board.

So to week four and our first bonus tournament of the competition, the Players' Championship at Sawgrass, Florida where the Golf Masters' prize money will be one and a half times the regular amount.

Those of you patiently waiting for David Duval, Fred Couples, Joe Durant, Scott Simpson and Steve Flesch to make an appearance in the 1999 Golf Masters' season need wait no more - all five are amongst the entries for the tournament.

Likewise Philip Price, Michele Reale, Neil Roderick, Johan Rystrom and Kalle Brink are amongst those scheduled to make their 1999 Golf Masters' debut at the Madeira Island Open, week four's second tournament and the last in Europe until week seven.