IF MILLS, Beattie, Mariner and Wark were card-carrying members of the Golf Masters tour, there’s a fair chance that they’d feature in the Tractors 7 selection of James Walsh which currently tops our overall leaderboard. The Dublin Bus driver’s love affair with all things Ipswich Town began around the time of the 1978 FA Cup final when those three English and one Scottish international were part of the Tractor Boys team that beat Arsenal 1-0.
You couldn’t blame Walsh for spending the rest of this week glued to the telly to monitor the progress of the seven players who have kept him top of our standings for the last three weeks but tomorrow he will instead travel to the RSC where Ipswich will continue preparations for another season in the Championship with a friendly against Waterford United.
Walsh can rattle off Ipswich stats like bullets from a rapid-fire machine gun and if his Golf Masters analysis is half as good, which it seems to be, the 5,894 managers trying to overhaul him have their work cut out. Without dipping into the transfer market in week 14, he managed to more than double Tractors 7 lead from €46,643 to €95,691. Admittedly that had a lot to do with a woeful performance by Frank Brennan’s Lucan 2 who dropped from second to third having ranked 4,770th for the week with just €20,750.
This allowed Paraic O’Neill to take second spot despite his Magnificent Seven 5 selection picking up only €55,214.
Top scorer for Walsh was Nick Watney (€47,500 for tied sixth in the Scottish Open) and Watney is one of six Tractors in action at Turnberry this week where we have double money on offer for the season’s third major.
Walsh quietly fancies Justin Leonard for the Open and as he doesn’t already employ him and is unlikely to recruit him for budgetary reasons, the good news for Walsh is that the Texan doesn’t appear in any of our top-100 selections.
Thus a second Open success for the 1997 champion wouldn’t unduly trouble our leader. Not that he’s in defensive mode just yet. Like four of our top five and 16 of our top 20 he’d be cheering loudly if Lucas Glover could repeat his US Open triumph – just not quite as loudly as he did when Roger Osborne stuck the ball past Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings in that ’78 final.
Our week 14 winner was rookie manager Brian Kelly from Monkstown in County Dublin. With Percentage Golf his only team in the competition you could say that he’s just dipping his toe in the shark-infested Golf Masters water but he’s quickly learning how to swim. Kelly had €3.8 million in his transfer kitty and felt that Martin Kaymer’s form couldn’t be ignored after the French Open.
He recruited the German in place of Jonathan Byrd and reaped a quick reward as Kaymer bagged another victory at the Scottish Open.
Our €100,000 top prize along with Raphael Jacquelin’s €75,000 for tied second propelled Kelly to the top of the weekly standings for which he wins a fourball at Druids Heath and a Nike Golf Dri Fit Polo shirt.
