Invaders measly purse keeps Lorraine on top

AFTER HER Irish Invaders won a measly €40,611 in week nine Lorraine O’Brien might be a bit surprised to see that she has held on to top spot on our overall leaderboard. When she hears of the fate that befell some of her closest rivals, though, she’ll understand why she’s still the manager to catch.

Take Seán Deasy. His DC 111 line-up was sitting nicely in sixth place overall last week, with four of his players scheduled for action at the Wales Open and the Memorial. How did they fare? Everyone of them missed the cut, giving Seán a grand total of €2,000 in earnings in week nine. Down to 18th he goes.

Ian Holmes, our second placed manager last week, had five players on duty, which, you’d imagine, made him feel he had half a chance of closing the gap on Lorraine. Well, two of them missed the cut, two more finished outside the top 50 at the Memorial, with Thomas Bjorn’s share of 43rd in Wales the highlight of LUFC’s week’s work. Down to seventh he goes.

Mind you, it could have been worse – ask the manager of Team Chib. Seven weeks ago we congratulated him or her (no name given) on being the only person to hire Scott Strange on the eve of his China Open triumph. Now? Chib won not a single euro in week nine, the only team in the entire competition to suffer such a calamitous fate, all seven of its players relaxing at home. Swings and roundabouts, you might say.

In all, five managers dropped out of the top 10, replaced by Frank Brennan, Raymond Behan, Eugene McMahon, Diarmuid Reddan and Paul O’Halloran. What have they in common? You guessed right, they all employ Memorial winner Tiger Woods.

Frank, Raymond, Diarmuid and Paul were just four of 130 managers who transferred Woods in to their teams last week in anticipation of a lucrative return from the Memorial and, next week, the US Open. Oddy enough, four more managers opted to dispense with Woods’ services just as he was returning to action – hello to Danny, Tony, Conor and John.

Overall, Woods now appears in 662 Golf Masters’ teams, one of them managed by Robert Murphy of Kilmainham in Dublin. This is Robert’s first year in the competition and, until week nine, his debut was proving less than impressive, his team languishing in 4,364th place. “They were due a good week,” he said, and a very good week is what they had.

Apart from Woods, Robert’s leading performers were Niclas Fasth and Ignacio Garrido, who were second and third at the Wales Open, and Jonathan Byrd, who took a share of third at the Memorial, where Daniel Chopra and Chris DiMarco also had top 15 finishes. Only Michael Hoey, who missed the cut in Wales, had a week to forget. Robert is now up to 672nd overall but, more importantly, is the winner of a fourball in Druids Heath and a Nike polo shirt.

Just to remind you all, there are changes to the original Golf Masters’ schedule for the next three weeks – this week we have just one counting tournament, the St Jude Championship in Memphis; next week we have the St Omer Open and US Open, and, in week 12, the Travelers Championship in Connecticut. Remember, the BMW International in Munich (June 25th-28th) doesn’t count because its dates had not been confirmed when we were putting our schedule together.