Waiting game just one of many thorny dilemmas

IT WAS only last week that we offered, on behalf of their 695 managers, speedy recoveries to Steve Stricker, Retief Goosen and Anthony Kim whose participation in this week’s Players’ Championship was in doubt because of a tweaked sternoclavicular joint, a broken toe and an ailing left thumb, respectively.

How useful were our best wishes? All three withdrew from the tournament this week.

There was, at least, good news for Ian Poulter’s employers after a knee injury had threatened to rule him out of action at Sawgrass – news that, curiously enough, prompted two managers to sign him up last week. Well, fortunately for them, he’s in the field, partnering Tiger Woods and Hunter Mahan in the first two rounds.

That news is less good for the 40 managers who gave up on Poulter in the last week, they must now sit back and watch, with a certain degree of trepidation, as he sets about winning our first bonus tournament of the year, with €150,000 going to the champion.

That, though, is the class of dilemma that confronts our managers week in, week out: if a player is suffering from an injury, or if he’s out of sorts, do you cut your losses and bring in new blood, or do you keep the faith and trust that your patience will be rewarded?

The fear, of course, is that the moment you abandon a fella he’ll shake off his injury, return to action and display precisely the kind of form that persuaded you to “buy” him in the first place. The Fretting Forty might worry that Poulter is about to fall into that very category, giving them a similar Monday morning Golf Masters’ feeling to the one endured by Rory McIlroy’s ex-bosses this week.

Michael Sim and Jeev Milkha Singh’s managers are in just such a predicament as we speak. It’s a costly enough quandary too – Sim has a price tag of €3.5 million, Singh is valued at €3 million. How much have they won between them to date? Not a cent.

A damaged tendon in his right shoulder has sidelined Sim since the start of the 2010 Golf Masters, forcing him to withdraw from the Players this week, a similar problem besetting Singh. Both men hope to return this month, Singh targeting the Texas Open in week six, but when does patience stop being a virtue for Golf Masters’ managers and start becoming ruinous? Decisions, decisions.