It has been a season of two halves, so far, for Gary Orr and Steve Stricker who, after the first 10 weeks of the competition were contenders for our `worst buy of the year' title.

Orr's improvement in form, in the last nine weeks, has been the most dramatic, earning u £261,000 compared to the u £4,500 he picked up from the first third of the 1998 Golf Masters.

In those 10 weeks Orr played in five tournaments, missed the cut on three occasions and finished outside the top 50 the two times he survived in to the weekend - all of which left him in 217th position, out of 240 players, on our `leading earners' list. Since then a joint second finish at the Volvo PGA Championship and top 10 placings at the Irish Open and Loch Lomond Invitational have helped make him our joint sixth leading earner over the past nine weeks.

He shares sixth place with Steve Stricker, who was languishing back in 116th position after the first 10 weeks of the competition.