We don't really need to dust down our calculator to figure out who are the top bargain buys in this year's Golf Masters, all we have to do is take a look at the line-ups of our leading managers. After all, they wouldn't be where they are now if it wasn't for the Fredrik Jacobsons and Nick O'Herns of this world.
Indeed, there's a liberal sprinkling of such over-achievers in our top 10 teams. Take our leader, for example. Our top two bargain buys, the above-mentioned Jacobson and O'Hern, feature in Colin Rutherford's Glenmore Eagles 2, as does Mark Brooks, our ninth "best value for money" player of the year. The only one of Colin's seven players outside the top 70 in the value for money stakes is Raymond Russell.
Second-placed Paul Ryan, meanwhile, has been even greedier with his selection of players, who have confounded those entrusted with the task of putting transfer values on their heads at the start of the year. Ryan's Raiders 5 is made up of four players in our top 20 "steal of the year" list - O'Hern, Brooks, Kenny Perry and Kirk Triplett - and even his second "worst" buy cannot exactly be deemed a failure (earnings: £749,167; name: Woods).
It goes without saying (almost) that not one of our "worst value for money" players makes an appearance in a top 10 line-up.
Best value for money
Player Value Earnings p/£
1 Fredrik Jacobson (0.5) 347,300 0.69 2 Nick O'Hern (0.5) 254,325 0.51 3 Roger Chapman (0.5) 232,012 0.46 4 David Lynn (0.5) 175,375 0.35 5 Niclas Fasth (0.5) 172,083 0.34 6 Richard Green (0.5) 166,750 0.33 7 Bradley Dredge (0.5) 164,821 0.33 8 Anders Hansen (0.5) 161,708 0.32 9 Mark Brooks (0.5) 160,800 0.32 10 Stephen Gallacher (0.5) 155,325 0.31
Worst value for money
Player Value Earnings p/£
1 J M Singh (1.6) 2,750 0.002 2 Marco Dawson (1.3) 4,000 0.003 3 Warren Bennett (0.9) 3,000 0.003 4 Pedro Linhart (0.7) 2,500 0.004 5 Steve Elkington (3.5) 14,750 0.004 6 P-U Johansson (1.8) 8,375 0.005 7 Lucas Parsons (1.6) 8,250 0.005 8 Pierre Fulke (2.0) 11,500 0.006 9 Michael Jonzon (1.2) 8,000 0.007 10 Keith Nolan (0.7) 5,000 0.007
