No joy this time for Van the man

Oh well, at least Maidenhead's Van Phillips and Doneraile's Frank Nyhan had a good week one, when the golfer won the Portuguese Open and the manager won a fourball. Week two? The golfer missed the cut by two strokes at the Turespana Masters and the manager saw his team tumble from first to 32nd, just when the pair thought they had this game sussed.

While Van and Frank were whooping it up last week, Figi's Vijay Singh and Ballincollig's Morgan O'Donovan were bemoaning a less than auspicious beginning to the 1999 Golf Masters. The golfer missed the cut by six strokes at the Doral Ryder Open and the manager had a sluggish, if not disastrous, start.

Week two? Vijay won the Honda Classic and Morgan's off to Mount Juliet. His "Professionals", led by Honda Classic and Turespana Masters runners-up Payne Stewart and Steve Webster, won £254,500 at the weekend, with top 10 finishes for Alex Cejka and Tommy Tolles bringing in another £93,000 to the team kitty - making up for Darren Clarke, Warren Bennett and Paul Lawrie's failure to make the cut.

And when Morgan takes to the course at Mount Juliet, kitted out in his chic Golf Masters polo shirt, he'll be setting a tricky standard for future four-ball winners to maintain. Why? Our four-ball winner is a professional golfer, no less. Now based at Cork Golf Club, Morgan started out at Lee Valley, where he spent four years, before joining the Little Island club just over a year ago. So, we'll have no four-ball-winning double-figure handicappers from now on, thank you very much. Look who's 10th on the overall and fourth on the weekly leader-board this week - Rory Timlin Junior, 12-year-old son of reigning "worst manager of the year" Rory Senior.

If we turned the leader-boards upside down Senior would probably be very proud of Junior - as it is, he's besmirching the family name. (Senior's "Underdogs" had a much worse week than last week, thank God - two of them finished outside the top 50 in Spain, three missed the cut and, best of all, two took the weekend off). A pat on the back, too, for Kevin Farrell (Dublin), Angus Murray (Dublin) and Nuala Arrigan (Portlaoise) who had both week two's winners, Singh and Miguel Angel Jimenez, moving all three in to the top 50.

Two hundred and six managers benefited from Singh's success at the weekend with 303 reaping the rewards of Jimenez's victory on home soil, but of the top five finishers in week two, Mark O'Meara's share of third place at the Nissan Open was the most popular - 511 include the American in their line-ups.

Frenchman Raphael Jacquelin, meanwhile, has earned the right to thumb his nose at the 19,459 of you who didn't consider him for selection at the start of the competition - our second least popular player is our sixth highest earner after two tournaments, thanks largely to his third place finish at the Turespana Masters. Least popular choice Olivier Edmond is, however, continuing to justify our manager's lack of interest in him - he missed the cut for the second week in a row. Mind you, he still has earned £500 more than Darren Clarke to date - the 5,980 managers who made him this year's most popular player will hope he rediscovers his form soon. Very soon.

Our new overall leader this week is Barry McStay of Friarstown, Co Kildare, whose exotically named Casa Do Lago 25 lead Morgan O'Donovan by just over £6,000 and Paul Kinirons of Kildare by another £16,000.

A No Name Given manager has declared himself - step forward Bill Woods of Templeogue in Dublin. Bill's "Woods 4" made it to 24th on the leader-board last week but he had no proof so "my moment of glory has passed and nobody will believe me. A polo shirt would help me get over missing my five minutes of fame - medium would be just about right". Oh, go on then.

The Bay Hill Invitational is the only tournament on week three's schedule which, of course, will make it a fairly bleak weekend for those teams with a European bias. If you're thinking of using one or more of your transfers soon bear in mind, too, that the Players Championship (one and half times the regular prize money) and the US Masters (double money) are both coming up in the next four weeks.