WITH THREE of his players missing the cut and another not playing at all, Gavin Kelly had no right to win a weekly prize when we were offering double money at the British Open.

However a weekly prize of a fourball at Druids Heath and a Nike Golf Dri Fit Polo shirt is exactly what he gets after the efforts of Stewart Cink (€200,000 for first) Chris Wood (€130,000 for tied-third) and Thomas Levet (€15,000 for tied-38th) helped his third Cink selection to a winning total of €348,000.

To his credit, Kelly employed Cink from the outset and stuck with him as he went through some minor swing changes, the switch from belly to regular putter and a rethink of his approach.

Even more to Kelly’s credit is that he was cute enough to bring in Wood on the eve of the Open and was one of only three managers to employ both champion Cink and the young Englishman with the gravity-defying hair.

As Tom Watson didn’t have a Golf Masters card and a Cink-Westwood pairing was only possible in a team including four players priced at €0.5 million plus Jonathan Caldwell as the compulsory Irishman, the three teams having both Cink and Wood filled the top-three places.

It was Levet’s contribution that gave Kelly the edge as the 3rd Cink had €9,800 to spare over the anonymously-managed Keitho and €16,000 over Iain Collins’s Team Actimel.

It’s back to regular fare this week as we offer our standard prize money for both SAS Masters in Sweden and the Canadian Open in, you’ve guessed it, Canada.

e-mail: golfmasters@irishtimes.com