The A Teams

"We contestants worry about the staff at Golf Masters Headquarters. While we are plotting and scheming our way to a £10,000 pay-off in September, or, more modestly, a day's divoting in Mount Juliet, they are all tethered to hot laptops, in the deep dark innards of The Irish Times, committed (or at least some people think they should be) to scribing a few hundred focals in time for Thursday's edition.

Sadly, as alleged employees of The Irish Times, the Golf Masters staff is disqualified from taking part in the actual competition and must content themselves with a few carefully selected, but not entered, teams.

Last year, after week 25 to be precise, the Golf Masters HQ team was revealed, (Clarke, O'Meara, Janzen, Stricker, Huston, Day and Estes) amid much bravado and beating of chests. Easy really, with the benefit of hindsight firmly attached by a big shiny safety pin to your drawers.

I suggest that it's now time for them to nail their colours to the mast and nominate this year's "Fantasy" Golf Masters HQ team, in plenty of time to win friends and influence people.

If they are brave enough to stick their collective heads above the parapet and your best team is languishing down in position 17,000 plus VAT, fear not. Take a pair of scissors, carefully extract their selection from Thursday's Irish Times and put it in a safe place. Come September, you'll probably be in need of a good laugh."

Thank you for your email Donal Ryan - although your allegation that we selected last year's dream team at the END of the competition left a dagger through our hearts. Here's our 1999 line-up: David Duval, Bob Estes, Steve Pate, David Toms, Greg Kraft, Chris DiMarco and Des Smyth.

By our calculations that gives us a total of £993,184 which (and we don't want to boast) would put us £203,899 ahead of our current overall leader Richard Butler, if we had been allowed enter. The team's name? "Pigs Might Fly'. P.S. Our second line-up - Olazabal, Estes, Pate, Smyth, Greg Norman, Carlos Franco, Sandy Lyle - won £661,600 at the weekend, which means, if there was any justice, we'd be heading to Mount Juliet now. The team's name? "Lying Through Our Back Teeth".