Sure money isn't everything is it?

You know the way Jose Maria Olazabal became a little emotional when he won the US Masters on Sunday night? One suspects the managers below were a bit overcome themselves, especially around the time Jose slipped on that dapper green jacket.

It's hard to know where to start, but here goes: Conor Dalglish (Malahide), Peter Dunne (Lucan), Declan Faller (Galway), Donie Keane (Tralee), Rory Lenihan (Letterkenny), Barry McStay (Friarstown), Fiona Murphy (Sandyford), Shane O'Neill (Greystones), Thomas O'Sullivan (Youghal) and Aidan Storey (Inchicore).

All we can say to the above is that money ISN'T everything - would your quality of life really have been any better if you HADN'T transferred Olazabal out of your teams on the eve of the Masters and ended up with £200,000 more in your Golf Masters' accounts? It would? Right.

There were three more teams on that list too, managed by Cormac Reilly (Navan), Cormac Reilly (Navan) and Cormac Reilly (Navan). All three names were a bit familiar so we did a quick check of last year's facts and figures and the awful truth was revealed. Cormac, aged 12, transferred Mark O'Meara OUT of his team on the eve of the 1998 US Masters. And, last week, Cormac, aged 13, transferred Olazabal OUT of three of his teams . . . on the eve of the 1999 US Masters.

Cormac was at school when we rang so we had a chat with his mother. Did he remember that he had transferred out . . .? "Oh, did he what - if you saw the face on Sunday night. `If only I'd left it alone,' he kept saying." We'll send him another polo shirt. Medium again? "No, he's a different fella now, you wouldn't believe how he's shot up - make it large." Large it is.

At least Cormac (who knows so much about golf it's frightening) has other teams doing very nicely in the competition but we can't imagine anything could console the manager who fired Olazabal and Greg Norman (third in the Masters) last week and hired Hal Sutton (missed the cut) and Bob May (didn't play) - a polo shirt and a `deepest sympathy' card on the way.

Now for happier news. Imagine having the winner, the third-placed and both joint-fourth placed players at the Masters in your team? Take a bow Tom Barry of Corbally, Limerick, whose four-ball-winning line-up - Olazabal, Greg Norman, Bob Estes, Steve Pate and Fred Funk - won a staggering £571,000, moving them up to 13th overall. (Second placed Theresa Cummins of Dublin? Consider yourself the unluckiest Golf Masters' manager on the planet).

Incidentally, Tom is maintaining a fine Corbally tradition in the competition -this time last year his son Kevin went top of the overall leader-board with Augusta Special and stayed there for quite a while, until finally finishing 10th.

For the sixth successive week we have a new overall leader, Richard Butler of Ballinteer, Dublin and up to 15th overall is The Love Machine (we'll say nothing), managed by one Frank Mooney of Clonskeagh in Dublin who, last week, was 19,533 rd with another of his teams and appeared in the published bottom 10 list. Thank you for your fax Frank, listing out all your excuses for `Darren's Dream' (the one about your rickety old computer where you keep your team spreadsheets was most . . . unconvincing) and congratulations on The Love Machine's success (and yes, you can have a polo shirt for appearing on the "loser-board and leader-board" on successive weeks).

Thanks too to Graham Cooke (Ballinteer, Dublin) who faxed us to point out what a fantastic sporting weekend it was, with success for the Irish under-20 football team, Bobbyjo in the Grand National, the Dublin Gaelic footballers, Jordan's Heinz Harald Frentzen, Fergal O'Brien, "Wales depriving England of the Five Nations Championship" and Olazabal winning the Masters. "By doing so he put my Minus Seven team in to contention in this year's Golf Masters - what more could anyone ask for? (A polo shirt perhaps?)." Ye're a sneaky lot, ye managers.

Paul McGinley (our second `most hired' player) returns to action at this week's Estoril Open (along with Philip Walton, Eamonn Darcy, John McHenry and Des Smyth) while the MCI Classic in South Carolina fills the slot in week six's US schedule.