St Patrick's Day and the final rounds of our opening tournaments, the Qatar Masters and the Bay Hill Invitational, seem a long time ago, and for many of our managers the chance of winning a trip to Pebble Beach has well and truly gone.
Fortunately for Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke, that opportunity may come again in a future AT&T Pro-Am or US Open. The two professionals are going head-to-head in our Charity Challenge for €1,500, but neither would have a sniff of our overall prize.
McGinley selected himself, Charles Howell, Philip Price, Lee Janzen, Luke Donald, Raymond Russell and Fred Funk. Their combined earnings so far are just €832,219, which has them outside our top 10,000! Clarke also selected himself, along with Paul Casey, Loren Roberts, Stephen Gallacher, Nick Dougherty, Per-Ulrik Johansson and David Gossett. They have amassed €1,173,075 to lie around the middle of the overall leaderboard. The difference between the two teams is almost fully accounted for by the difference between McGinley and Clarke themselves.
With hindsight, they should have taken our advice and gone for EamonDarcy as their Irish player. Then they could have picked, for example, Phil Mickelson, Eduardo Romero, Bradley Dredge, Colin Montgomerie, Jay Haas and Peter Fowler for a leading total of €2,437,843 with all transfers intact.
This was the best we could manage without recourse to the Golf Masters computer. If you can do better based on this week's standings, then e-mail your team to ITGolfMasters@hotmail.com. The sender of the best selection will receive a Kartel windcheater.
