Murray takes over the lead

Well now, just as we thought the 1998 Golf Masters was turning into a two-horse race, between Kevin Barry's Augusta Special and the Murnaghan brothers' Bargain Basement, we have ourselves a new leader - Niall Murray, of Dungannon, Co Tyrone.

Kevin Barry had led the competition for nine of the last 11 weeks, with only Brian Buttimer (in week seven) and the Murnaghans, Tony and Brian (in week 12), interrupting his reign at the top. However, with earnings of just £7,250 in week 17, Augusta Special has slipped to third. Four of the team - Darren Clarke, Jose Maria Olazabal, Thomas Bjorn and Paul Azinger - took the weekend off while John Huston, Bob Estes and Billy Mayfair all finished outside the top 40 at the Western Open in Chicago.

The Murnaghans, who also have Huston and Estes in their line-up, had David Howell to thank for helping Bargain Basement overtake Augusta Special, after his share of eighth place at the French Open won the team £38,000 - but they could have done with a better return from Glen Day than the £500 he won for missing the cut in America.

Niall Murray, who jumped from 10th to third overall last week, probably didn't hold out much hope of closing the gap on the top two when he realised that five of his Seven Up line-up - Clarke, Bjorn, Azinger, Mathias Gronberg and Tony Johnstone - wouldn't be in action. However, top 10 finishes for Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker at the Western Open won the team £95,500, enough to put Niall on top of our overall leaderboard for the first time in the competition.

Niall has an added advantage over his closest rivals in that he has yet to use even one of the four transfers available to him - Kevin Barry and the Murnaghans have used up all of theirs. He may be tempted, though, to follow the example of our 1996 winner, Michael McManamon, and stick with the same line-up throughout the competition.

Or he could choose to dabble in the transfer market, as Edward Staunton did last year, and pray that the golfers he's just fired don't turn around and win the following week's tournaments . . . or that the ones he's just hired don't decide to end their season early and head for a Caribbean beach. It's all very nice leading the Golf Masters but there are plenty of stresses and strains that come with the honour. Paul Doyle of Leopardstown in Dublin, who entered the top 50 in ninth place last week, has moved up to fourth overall; Michael Coughlan of Navan rose from 15th to sixth, while Robert Sinnott of Sutton in Dublin now has two teams in the top ten - Lee's Freebies moved from 18th to eighth and The Sixties also jumped 10 places, from 19th to ninth.

There is now just over £100,000 between the top eight teams and with one and a half times the regular prize money on offer at this week's Irish Open there's every chance that there'll be yet more movement in next week's overall leaderboard. Tony Murnaghan, one half of Bargain Basement's managerial team, won his second fourball in a year, thanks to the performance of The Sultans of Swing at the weekend. The five members of the team who played won £264,500 between them - Philip Walton (tied for 11th) and David Howell (joint eighth) at the French Open and Vijay Singh (second), Lee Janzen (joint third) and Steve Stricker (joint fifth) at the Western Open.

So to week 18 - remember, if an Irish player wins the Irish Open he will collect a Golf Masters' cheque for £400,000. Ten of the 13 Irish players on our list are in the field for Druid's Glen. The three absentees are Ronan Rafferty (who withdrew last weekend after a recurrence of a thumb injury), Richard Coughlan (who is in action at the Greater Hartford Open, week 18's American tournament) and Cameron Clark. Speaking of Cameron Clark - his 785 managers were entitled to feel extremely sorry for themselves after he was forced to withdraw from the French Open last weekend with a sprained wrist, an injury he picked up playing football the night before the second round. "Drat, darn, flip," they probably didn't say when they heard the bad news.