Fantasy golf: things a lot more bullish when it comes to Rahm

While you were all no doubt delighted for them and their unexpected successes, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Nate Lashley, Chez Reavie and Andrea Pavan’s triumphs in weeks 11 and 12 of our competition didn’t have much of an impact on your fortunes – only a minuscule percentage of our managers having any of the quartet in their line-ups.

Yet Jon Rahm ended that particular run on Sunday, his victory in Lahinch proving considerably more popular among our entrants, almost one third of whom had the Spaniard on board.

Among them were last week’s top three managers Nigel Oglesby, Sean Walsh and Ronnie McCarthy, all of whom would have been especially chuffed with Rahm’s success having awarded him the captaincy ahead of the tournament; 13 per cent of our teams in all skippered by him.

Nigel and Ronnie would have been particularly grateful to Rahm because he was the only member of their teams to produce any result of note; Brooks Kopeka’s 65th place finish at the 3M Open in Minnesota, for example, in or around 65 places lower than they might have anticipated.

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Sean had Koepka in his line-up too, as well as Rahm, but while most of the rest fared as poorly as Nigel and Ronnie’s also-rans, he at least benefitted from Hideki Matsuyama’s top 10 finish in Minnesota, allowing him to cut Nigel’s lead by 240 to 410 points.

Meanwhile Enrico Marugliano and Barry O’Connor fill slots number four and five on the leaderboard, while Hazel Sheridan and Aisling Smyth are back in the top 10 – all four managers indebted to …. yes, captain Rahm.

Former leaders

But two of our former leaders had a less happy time of it in week 13: Pat Casey dropping from fourth to 11th, and Joe Connolly tumbling from 13th to 35th, having been third in week eleven. The chief culprit for both men was their captain Koepka, although unlike Joe, Pat at least had the consolation of having Rahm in his team.

At the other end of the scale was Ashling Kinahan, whose Sandpit team topped the 2,000 points-winning mark, the only one to do so in week 13. Captain Bryson DeChambeau, who tied for second at the 3M Open, was her leading earner, closely followed by Rahm and Bernd Wiesberger, joint runner-up in Lahinch. Sam Burns and Matsuyama, one of a group to share seventh place in Minnesota, chipped in generously too.

Not a single one of our managers had 3M Open winner Matthew Wolff in their line-ups, but considering he wasn’t on our player lis we can hardly fault you. The 20-year-old won just the third professional tournament of his career, having missed the cut and tied for 80th in his previous two outings, so while he picked up a cheque for $1.152 million he also earned himself a much richer prize: a belated spot on that player list.

Big names

Next up are the Scottish Open and the John Deere Classic in Illinois, the latter tournament short enough on big names, most of them now this side of the Atlantic in preparation for next week’s British Open.

As the only top-50 ranked player in the original field, Kevin Na might well have attracted significant transfer interest, but having withdrawn after round one of the 3M Open, citing a neck injury, he has since pulled out of the John Deere Classic. To the 8 per cent of you who have the fella in your team, all we can say is…. commiserations.