Bold Bourke takes the wrong option

For reasons that will become apparent, the phrase "nothing ventured, nothing gained" sprang to mind when planning this week's column. From there it wasn't a massive leap to the question "whatever happened to Chip Beck?"

You remember Chip. He was one of the world's best players in the late 1980s and early 1990s, winning four tournaments on the PGA Tour and playing in three Ryder Cup teams. He became the second player to shoot 59 in a professional event when he had 13 birdies in the third round of the 1991 Las Vegas Invitational.

And he suffered a career slump in 1997-'98 when he missed the cut in 47 consecutive tournaments.

But we bet that the first thing you thought of when you saw the name, Chip Beck, was the way he ended as runner-up to Bernhard Langer in the 1993 Masters. Beck is famous for laying up on the 15th (from 236 yards) when he trailed Langer by three shots in the final round. Giving up the chance of an eagle, Beck walked off with a par and has never been let forget that he didn't "go for it" when he had a shot at winning a major.

The other side of the coin is that Beck could have taken on that shot, dumped it in the water, run up a nine just like Vijay Singh did this year and fallen right off the leaderboard.

Golf Masters manager Paul Bourke faced a similar dilemma last week. His "Fisherman's Friends" selection lay 11,529th in the overall standings. Should he persist with under-achievers such as Chris Smith or should he shake things up in a dramatic bid for glory?

Smith had provided Bourke and his other 116 managers with an unimpressive four cent return for each of the €1.4 million he cost them at the start of the season. So it wasn't just geography that made a trip to Pebble Beach seem a long way off.

Bourke decided to act and cut Smith and Mathias Gronberg in favour of Anders Hansen and Shigeki Maruyama. In the water! Treble bogey! Smith captures the Buick Classic for his first PGA Tour victory, Bourke's transactions produce a net loss of €100,000 and he drops a few hundred places nearer the bottom of our overall rankings.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Bourke didn't lay up and he gets a Kartel windcheater for his troubles.

The bigger prize of a fourball at Carton House plus lunch goes to Courtown member Séamus Flood who fired accurately with his "Number 7 iron" to accumulate weekly winnings of €311,000. Flood was one of 12 managers to employ both Smith and English Open winner Darren Clarke. The inclusion of Pat Perez (€70,000 for tied second in Buick Classic) proved to be the decisive factor.

There was little change in the overall standings with none of the top-10 delving into the transfer market. All but Michael Keegan's sixth-placed "Postulators" do have transfers in hand but it was a case of holding fire in advance of a major. There's no excuse this week. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.