Fantasy Golf: Wesley Bryan’s latest trick catches peers by surprise

You get fireworks and pyrotechnics one week, and, well, how can we explain what happened next?

Damp squib would perhaps be the best description!

For starters, none of our Allianz Irish Times Fantasy Golf managers were exactly jumping up and down when one-time trick shot wizard Wesley Bryan produced his greatest trick of all when winning the RBC Heritage in week two of the competition.

Bryan had six birdies and two bogeys in a closing 67 to finish on 13 under, with serial runner-up Luke Donald a shot further back after a round of 68.

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Patrick Cantlay, William McGirt and Ollie Schneiderjans were tied for third on 11 under, but former US PGA champion Jason Dufner had a day to forget as he plummeted down the leaderboard with a closing 76.

“I’m going to remember this for a long time,” said Bryan. “I feel like I was missing greens and scrambling but still managed to make a good score of it. Looking at the leaderboard and knowing I just needed to make a two-putt on the last was pretty special.”

Bryan’s magic earned him a whole pile of rewards – including over a million greenbacks to put into his bank account, a place in the field at The Players and The Memorial, a new tartan jacket for his wardrobe and due recognition that he is more than a one trick pony.

But he didn’t furnish points for any of our managers for the simple reason that he wasn’t made available in the initial list of players. Oops!

You might notice a little magic trick of our own from now on, because red-hot tour rookie Bryan has since been added to the list of players for the remaining 17 weeks of the competition which is a little bit of good news for all of you Wes fans out there.

With no, ahem, Edoardo Molinari – winner of the Trophee Hassan II – on the list either, there was, not surprisingly, precious little movement at the business end of the week two leaderboard.

Niall Kavanagh’s HillHoppers remain on top but Derek Nethaway’s Golfy McGolferson jumped from fifth up to second thanks to the inclusion of Donald, runner-up to Bryan at Hilton head, as team captain.

Early days

These are early days yet in the race for this year’s title, which has a first prize of €10,000 to the winner, €3,000 to the runner-up and €2,000 to the third -placed manager. So, all to play for really for the nearly 6,000 managers in the competition.

A reminder, teams have one free transfer each week but you can receive two more by using the code that will appear in the newspaper every Tuesday and Wednesday. You then enter that code on the irishtimes.com/fantasygolf page, click the link and redeem your transfers. Remember, though, that you can't carry transfers from one week to another, any left over at the end of the week will be lost.

This week’s counting tournaments are far apart: the Shenzhen International in China on the PGA European Tour and the Valero Texas Open on the PGA Tour in the United States. Soomin Lee held off Joost Luiten and Brandon Stone to win the Shenzhen title a year ago, while Charley Hoffman is the defending holder in Texas.