If Frank Bruno could have put together a fistic combination to match that shown by Phillip Price on the 18th green at The K Club last Sunday, he could perhaps have troubled Mike Tyson for more than 10 seconds and had a decent reign as world heavyweight champion.
We're not sure of the boxing ability of Golf Masters manager Frank Cotter but he was certainly as pleased as punch when he we told him that he was the latest winner of our weekly prize of a fourball at the selfsame K Club.
"That's great. I have played it before and it's a magnificent track. Quite a few people will want to accompany me on that. It will be tough to choose," said Cotter, echoing the one complaint we often hear from our winners. In Cotter's case, the problem is more acute than normal. "My son plays, my brother plays, my brother-in-law plays - in fact every male I know swings a golf club!" Seems like a week-long outing rather than a mere fourball is required.
Andrew is the son in question and a fellow Golf Masters manager he is too. But while he was studying for his recently completed degree in European Studies, Frank was obviously busy with European Tour Studies. How else could you explain an awesome week-16 line-up that included European Open winner Price plus Alastair Forsyth (tied second), Darren Clarke (tied fifth), Andrew Coltart (tied seventh) and Lee Westwood (tied ninth)? All of their bonus money plus €500 for Per-Ulrik Johansson's missed cut in the Western Open amounted to €459,250, the second-best weekly score of the season.
That meant the anonymously managed Stackstown Birdies had to settle for second place. With a name like that you'd think they must include Padraig Harrington, who knows a thing or two about settling for second place himself, but in fact Darren Clarke is their only Irish player.
Mike and Diarmuid were getting slightly ahead of themselves in naming their third-placed team "Bound For The K-Club", but only slightly. They included both weekly winners, Price and Tiger Woods, but needed a better performance from their Irish player, Damien McGrane, to get to the top.
None of those three is of immediate concern to our overall leader, Pat Mullarkey. His Tiger Cubs increased their advantage over David Gorman's Mary by €396, which in a week when the total team earnings were just shy of €1.5 trillion (average €103,879) doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Mullarkey's other high flyers, the Warthogs, rose from seventh to fifth, although signing up Philip Golding brought the phrase "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" immediately to mind. Sure enough, a week after winning the French Open, Golding carded rounds of 78 and 80 to comfortably miss the K-Club cut.
Golf Masters veteran Finbar Lyons made one of the most significant moves of the week with his Fair Play 1 selection. They placed 14th with €366,354 to rise from 162nd to 22nd overall. A fortnight ago they were 264th and four weeks ago they weren't even in the top 1,000. That's excellent progress and we'll be monitoring them closely in this week's counting tournaments, the Scottish Open and the Greater Milwaukee Open.
