Rookie takes the top spot

The winds of change are blowing through the Golf Masters leaderboard and they are fresh and northerly. While previous overall winners Paul Sheehan, David Maune and Michael McManamon are all still in challenging positions, it is rookie Colin Rutherford from Lisburn who has taken top spot.

The debutante manager admits to being "quite lucky" when it comes to golf betting and with instincts honed from staking his own money, he has shown excellent judgment in managing his six Golf Masters selections in the hunt for £15,000 of our prize fund.

After a quiet start to the season, Rutherford has taken three teams into the top 50, including overall leaders Glenmore Eagles 2 and second-placed Glenmore Eagles 5. The Eagles 2 include Fredrik Jacobsen and Nick O'Hern who are the top two in our value for money stakes.

Selecting O'Hern who barely held on to his European Tour card last season may have been the desperate act of a manager with one player to pick and only half a million in the kitty. Barely 100 of our 20,000 managers were that desperate. However, he has come up trumps for those who were brave enough to keep the faith after he failed to show for the first eight weeks of the season.

O'Hern's top-10 finishes in the Wales and Irish Opens have not only shaken up Golf Masters, they have given the Japanese-speaking Australian a "current form" exemption into this week's British Open.

Rather than ditching O'Hern, Rutherford has preferred to use his transfers to juggle his big-value players with Lee Westwood, Padraig Harrington, Tiger Woods and Colin Montgomerie all being traded. Woods is his tip for St Andrews with Retief Goosen an each-way saver but we're sure that a top-10 finish for Nick O'Hern would be just as welcome in Lisburn.

If Rutherford holds on for the top prize, he will have to thank his friend Brendan Kelly who persuaded him to enter despite the fact that his own Kelly's Heroes have laboured in Golf Masters obscurity for years. Anyway, to celebrate a new name taking the top two places in the standings, we'll send off a polo shirt for each of you.

Our winners for week 19 are Ginger's Greats managed by Declan Quinn from Wicklow. Quinn is a familiar name in these columns for the various schemes he has employed to get a polo shirt over the years. The 1995, 1997 and 1999 models all hang in his wardrobe on foot of poems, phone calls and a degree of sympathy for a man who has entered 20 teams a year since the tour was founded and never legitimately won anything.

"Yeah, I've been waiting for this phone call for years," said Quinn on hearing of his good fortune. It didn't come without a bit of hard work and cuteness. With the Loch Lomond tournament starting on Wednesday there was a flurry of activity on our transfer lines after the first round scores were posted.

"It's either being smart or cheating," said Quinn. "I've meant to try it in other years but I've either been on holidays or forgotten about it but this time it has worked." It certainly isn't cheating and many people had a go. Quinn fared best by selling Padraig Harrington, Mike Weir, Sergio Garcia and Richard Green to bring in Tom Lehman (£80,000 for second at Loch Lomond), Notah Begay (£55,000 for tied fourth), Phil Mickelson (£43,000 for tied seventh) and Des Smyth (£500 for missed cut).

No polo shirt this time but Quinn won't have far to travel to avail of our weekly prize of a fourball at Tulfarris followed by dinner. Commiseration's to the five managers who employed both Ernie Els (Loch Lomond winner) and Loren Roberts (Milwaukee winner) but still came up short.