McNulty does the business with his fifth win

It may only have been inside the past few years that Mark McNulty has had an Irish passport tucked into his travelling bag, but the documentation has enabled the Zimbabwean native to discover new riches in his seniors career.

On Sunday, the 51-year-old became the fifth multiple winner of the season on the Champions Tour in the United States with victory in the Administaff Small Business Classic in Texas, with the win pushing him up to third in the money list.

If the tournament's title was something of an alphabet stew, the consequences more than compensated.

The winner's cheque for $240,000 - in claiming his fifth win in two years on the Champions Tour, and the 55th professional title of his career - not only enabled McNulty to jump to third place on the money list but also moved him to fourth in the Charles Schwab points standings, a performance-related table that offers a $1 million bonus to its leader after the season-ending tournament in two weeks' time.

McNulty, indeed, is proving to be something of an end-of-season specialist. Last year, he won the final two tournaments of the season.

This time round, he has started his winning run a week earlier, as he defends his SBC Championship in San Antonio, Texas, this week before defending the season-ending Charles Schwab Championship in California next week.

"I'm more or less where I want to be with my game," said McNulty, whose previous tournament success this season came in the Bank of America Championship in June, "and I'd love to close out as well as last year.

"I've had a solid year. To win another tournament would be great and to win another one would be fantastic. "

Always one of the most consistent players in his time on the European Tour, McNulty has taken that consistency onto a new level since turning 50.

His victory at Augusta Pines on Sunday - where he finished on 16-under-par 200 for a one-shot victory over Gil Morgan - was his 14th top-10 finish on the Champions Tour this season (a higher strike-rate than anyone, including money leader Dana Quigley) and was his sixth top-10 finish in his last eight starts.

McNulty, who has earned over $1.5 million in earnings on the Champions Tour this season, still has an outside chance of overtaking Quigley in the race to win the Order of Merit but the main challenger in both the money race and the Schwab points is Hale Irwin, who finished third behind McNulty on Sunday.

In joining Quigley, Irwin, Des Smyth and Jim Thorpe as multiple winners on the Champions Tour this season, McNulty has given his end-of-season campaign a real impetus going into the final two events of the year.

Smyth, meanwhile, has moved to ninth place in the Charles Schwab Cup points table and lies eighth in the money list, with winnings so far this season of $1,185,126.

The two-time winner on the Champions Tour this season stays on in America to play in this week's SBC Championship before moving on to take part in the season's finale event, the Charles Schwab championship which is confined to the elite players.

He does so in a far different situation to a year ago when Smyth finished the year with what he considered to be a poor card that resulted in a futile visit to tour school in an effort to improve on it.

This year, with two tournament wins, his status is very much improved.