The Irish Times Golf Masters:Seve Ballesteros's decision to retire this week had the golfing statisticians on heat as they churned out every factoid imaginable about the Spaniard. The two that caused most eyebrows to be raised at Golf Masters HQ both related to his wins on the European Tour.
Despite his injuries and wretched form over the last 10 years, he won more titles over the span of his playing career than every Irish player combined. He also set a European Tour record of at least one win in every season for 17 consecutive seasons (1976-1992).
Golf Masters hasn't been around for 17 seasons but as long as we keep going, Seamus O'Toole will be chasing down Seve's mark.
The Co Meath manager has been touring some of Ireland's finest courses thanks to winning our weekly prizes and his latest triumph has earned him a repeat trip to Druids Heath.
It is the sixth year in a row that he has picked up a fourball and his wardrobe must be fairly bulging with Golf Masters apparel, the latest addition being a Nike Windvest.
O'Toole entered several teams in this year's competition but has already given up hope of winning any of our overall cash prizes. However he continues to enjoy tweaking his selections and a critical change in week 15 lifted Nofinchance to the top of the standings.
O'Toole spotted that Paul Casey had opted to follow up his late withdrawal from the European Open by taking another week away from tournament play to prepare for the British Open.
Budget-wise, O'Toole could just about afford to drop Casey and bring in Sergio Garcia and while the Spaniard dropped three shots in the final two holes at Loch Lomond, the €16,454.55 he earned for tied-19th made all the difference as Nofinchance just edged out Carrickfergus, managed by Fergus Considine.
Things would have been very different if Phil Mickelson had held on to his lead in the Scottish Open but he was overhauled by Gregory Havret who doesn't have his card for the Golf Masters tour. That meant Jonathan Byrd (four missed cuts in a row before his victory in the John Deere Classic) was our highest scorer for the week with €100,000. O'Toole is one of only 53 managers to employ Byrd and his other players all finished inside the top 50 on one side of the Atlantic or the other.
Graeme McDowell (€32,000 for tied-11th), Robert-Jan Derksen (€26,250 for tied-13th) and the champagne-spraying Raphael Jacquelin (€10,750 for tied-32nd) did the business in Scotland. Stephen Leaney (€24,000 for tied-15th) and Kevin Na (€9,500 for tied-32nd) were his other scorers in the States.
O'Toole likes the odd flutter on the big tournaments and says that he wouldn't back Angel Cabrera for the British Open "going up the last" let alone before the start.
Leaving Tiger aside, the men he fancies at Carnoustie are Justin Rose (good choice) and Henrik Stenson (hmm . . . ) but as we've seen so often, picking tournament winners is desperately hard. One sure thing is that we will be paying double prize money which could make for some big changes on our overall leaderboard.
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