The strain was almost intolerable for him going into the US Masters. Having won the golden prize once already the pressure was on him to do it again and confirm his greatness in the biggest of all arenas - anything less than victory would have been, cruelly, deemed a failure. But, he set his own standards so it was up to him to maintain them. His rivals pushed him all the way, fired by a steely determination to deny him a second crown but, class will out - he fought them all off, showed his pedigree and rose magnificently to the occasion. By Sunday evening he'd done it again, and everyone at Golf Masters HQ doffed their caps in admiration - fair dues to you, Martin McGowan of Drumshambo, Co Leitrim.
True, the gap between Martin's two Golf Masters fourball winning successes is a little wider than the one between Tiger Woods's Augusta triumphs, but a double's a double in our book, if not quite a grand slam.
"I won a fourball to Mount Juliet in one of the first Golf Masters years so I thought that might be the end of my luck. This is totally unexpected, brilliant," said Martin, who reckons "the golf might be bad but the day will be good" when he travels to Powerscourt, Co Wicklow for the second fourball of his managerial career.
There was just £13,000 between Martin's AGGS 25 (Allen Gael's Golf Society) and the 10 teams that tied for 20th on our weekly leaderboard, the tightness of the contest caused largely by the fact most managers had Tiger Woods and one or two other "bargain" players in their line-ups - the one or two others made the difference in the end.
Mark Calcavecchia's share of fourth place (£115,000) and Tom Scherrer's 25th-place finish (£30,000), added to Woods' £200,000, helped Martin pip the unfortunate quintet of managers who also topped the £340,000 mark - John O'Mahony (Cork), Aidan McCague (Navan), Paul Dowling (Wicklow), Brian Crowley (Cork) and Alan Crawford (Greystones).
Incidentally, a couple of eagle-eyed managers let us know earlier in the week they had spotted that several websites and the BBC couldn't agree on Chris DiMarco's final score at Augusta - some had him tying for sixth, others had him in the group that tied for 10th. In the end we got the nice people in Florida who run the US PGA office to sort it out for us and the news isn't good for DiMarco's managers - he tied for 10th.
Michael Delaney, the GAA Leinster Council secretary, goes from second to first overall this week after Woods and Bernhard Langer added £287,000 to the account of Sally's Girl, Fionnuala McMahon's Aladdin Sane (for the benefit of those of you who are under 21 - it's the name of a David Bowie album) are up to second from fifth and Seamus Parle's Never Forget Eric (Dieu himself, Monsieur Cantona) are down from first to third.
It's back to near normality in week seven with Golf Masters action taking place on both sides of the Atlantic - our counting tournaments are the Moroccan Open and the Worldcom Classic at Hilton Head Island, formerly known as the MCI Classic. Can Martin McGowan do it again or will he prove he's a mere mortal, unlike Tiger Woods?
