For the first time in his professional career, Padraig Harrington will start a tournament - the Nedbank Golf Challenge in Sun City, starting on Thursday, which is confined to 12 players and offers $2 million to the winner - as the top-ranked Irish player in the world rankings.
With Darren Clarke yesterday slipping out of the top 10 in the world for the first time since July 1st, down to 11th, it means Harrington, in 10th, makes his debut in this elite event (which ironically does not offer world ranking points) as officially the top Irish golfer.
However, Clarke is considering adding next week's South African Players' Championship to his end-of-season schedule in an effort to regain a top-10 place by year's end.
Harrington and Clarke, whose best performance in this tournament, previously called the Million Dollar Challenge, was third in 1999, are each attempting to become the first Irish winners of the title.
Ernie Els, the world number four and top-ranked player in the field, is seeking to win the event for a third successive year.
The full line-up for this event, with golf's richest prize, is Els, Harrington, Clarke, Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen, Mike Weir, Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomerie, Jim Furyk, Thomas Bjorn, Lee Westwood and Nick Price.
It's indicative of the financial rewards available to the top echelon of golfers at this time of the year that Montgomerie has travelled on to South Africa from the Skins Match in California (won by Greg Norman, who scooped the $1 million prize).
In two weeks' time Harrington and Clarke will again be on the money trail in the Williams Challenge in California where they are part of an 18-man field handpicked by Tiger Woods. The winner will get $1 million, and the last placed player a guaranteed $100,000.
Meanwhile, Paul McGinley, who has consolidated his place at 36th in the world, will finish off his year's work - which has seen him secure a place on the Ryder Cup team for the match with the Americans at the Belfry next September and finish a career-high eighth in the European Tour Order of Merit - by competing in the Hong Kong Open this week, which is part of the 2002 European Tour season.
Despite failing to win his full tour card for next season, David Higgins' 2001 ranking is sufficiently high for him to also earn a starting place in the field.
For Bray's Keith Nolan, however, the challenge is to complete all six rounds in the US Tour final qualifying school which starts in Florida tomorrow if he is to successfully regain his tour card for next year.
