The best and the worst

We worry about Donal Ryan, here at Golf Masters' HQ. Last year his best-performing team in the competition finished a very creditable 292nd but on the evidence of his email he appears to have spent more time working out how he could have beaten Paul Sheehan to the £10,000 first prize, rather than figuring out how he's going to win this year's AIB Golf Masters. Look to the future Donal, forget the past. Donal (and everyone else) has until 12 noon today to enter this year's winning team - or, if you're Rory Timlin from Salthill, Galway enter this year's worst line-up (Rory will be bidding for his third `Worst Golf Masters' Manager Of The Year' title in-a-row).

One suspects that in the wee small hours, when we are safely tucked up in our leabas, Paul Sheehan, winner of the 1998 Irish Times Golf Masters, is awake, alert and pencilling in provisional team partners for this year's event. Through such dedication, concentration and devotion to detail is the Golf Masters won.

Or maybe not. Closer examination of last year's final player totals may help to unravel the secret of success.

In the course of selecting a team, if your pin had pierced the names of Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood, Santiago Luna, John Huston, Glen Day, Bob Estes and Mathias Gronberg, then you could have brought your entire team on holiday for the last week of the competition. The £1.1 million you saved out of the £12.5 million budget would have sufficed for spending money. Upon your return from the Riviera (I hear it's nice in September), you would have collected the £10,000 first prize with a healthy £113,493 to spare over Paul's total.

If the same pin felt irresistibly attracted to the names of Ronan Rafferty, Francis Howley, Cameron Clark, Greg Norman, Brad Bryant, Tom Purtzer and Wayne Levi, then the wry smile would long since have been wiped from Rory Timlin.

Rory retained his title as worst manager of the year in 1998 with a total of just £234,452 - the above team selection would have bettered (or worsened, depending on your perspective) Rory's paltry total by an astounding £195,702, yielding an appalling £38,750. I kid you not.

So go forth, with four-leafed weeds, rabbits' limbs and farriers' requisites. Pick seven good men and true. Make sure one of them has an Irish granny (isn't everybody's?) and don't spend any more than 15,871,726 Euros (that's £12.5 million to you and me). And, above all, HAVE FUN!

Enter as early and as often as you like . . . mind you, if you're going to be lucky enough to pick the seven golfers who will win you the £10,000 in September, then I suggest you don't buy a lottery ticket this week . . . you'll probably find one.