Mickelson helps close the gap

It's not that six of our top-10 managers weren't happy for David Toms when he holed that 12-foot par putt to take the USPGA championship, the wailing sounds they produced simply signified that their man missed out on a Golf Masters' cheque for £200,000, instead having to settle for £160,000.

And £40,000, the way our overall leaderboard is shaping up, could be the difference between these Phil Mickelson employers attending our prize-winning do in a couple of weeks' time or reading about it in the newspaper.

Mind you, Packie Gallagher, whose Keadue Rovers' line-up was one of 1,199 to include Mickelson going in to the USPGA (as opposed to a mere 151 to feature Toms) won't be complaining too much because the "best-player-never-to-have-won-a-major" helped him eat, appreciably, into the top two's lead.

Last week Packie trailed Tim Morris by a whopping £173,855 - this week he's just over £70,000 behind, and he's now less than £10,000 short of Ray Charles' total. So, Packie's a contender, and a serious one at that too.

Tim's Missing Links 3 had what you might call a mini-disaster in Atlanta with four of his competing players missing the cut - it was left to the other two, Paul McGinley and Chris Smith, to keep the team's head above water by winning just over £53,000 between them.

Ray fared only marginally better, with Tiger Woods and Scott McCarron letting him down a bagful. Our Dunmore, Co Galway manager made an 11th-hour transfer, replacing Jesper Parnevik with Woods but it backfired: Woods tied for 29th and Parnevik took a share of 13th. The transfer might pay off yet, though - Woods is in the field for this week's NEC Invitational, Parnevik isn't.

McCarron, meanwhile, raised Ray's hopes with opening rounds of 69 and 67 but then faded away, with a 73 and 77, to tie for 70th.

Mickelson, Scott Verplank (whose share of seventh was rewarded with one of Curtis Strange's Ryder Cup wild cards) and Chris DiMarco (tied for 16th) helped Vincent Sheehan of Blackrock, Co Dublin, rise from 12th to fourth overall while Mickelson was also the man largely responsible for Richard Power's climb from 16th to eighth.

But, the wily auld Golf Masters' fox himself is at it again - our 1998 winner Paul Sheehan now occupies three of our top 10 places. These Guys Are Good was his top scoring team, moving from 38th to 10th overall with the 19th highest score of the week; Back of the Cup rose from 10th to seventh and You're Dancing moved one place higher (up from 22nd).

Paul still has plenty of ground to make up on the leaders - and time is running out - but along with three other top 10 managers he still has a transfer or two up his sleeve, on all three of his teams. We'll watch his manoeuvring with interest.

Hats off to Terry Hogan of Carlow whose Wrecking Crew won him a fourball in Powerscourt - Toms, Steve Lowery (third), DiMarco and Dudley Hart (tied for 16th) netted a mammoth £426,000 between them.

Commiserations to John O'Mahony (Cork) and Alan Aylward (Dublin) who also topped the £400,000 mark but won nothing for their troubles . . . except a polo shirt.

And so to the penultimate Golf Masters' week of the competition. Remember, only the NEC Invitational counts - the Scottish PGA Championship wasn't confirmed until late March so it was too late to make it in to our schedule.

All eyes on Akron, then. And after that it's all down to the BMW International and Air Canada Championship.