They had one of their least productive weeks of the 1999 Golf Masters, but David Maune's Cremorne 1 still retain top spot on the overall leaderboard for the seventh successive week. However, once again, Pat Corby's Blackbirds 10 cut the lead at the top and for the first time since week 12, Cremorne 1's cushion over the second-placed team is down to five figures.

Just a month ago, Blackbirds 10 were back in 16th place, almost £350,000 behind Cremorne 1, but thanks largely to the form of Hal Sutton and Chris Perry (who have won over £280,000 between them in the last month) the gap is now down to £95,276.

Perry, Sutton (who both finished in the top 10 at the Western Open) and David Howell (who tied for 15th at the Irish Open) were Pat's leading earners in week 18, helping him cut Cremorne 1's lead by another £27,667 (they won just £85,083, most of which was contributed by Colin Montgomerie, who finished joint seventh at Druids Glen).

Eamonn Darcy's share of fourth at the Irish Open and Vijay Singh's fourth top-five finish in a row helped William Brennan's Follow the Sun 2 (who led the competition back in week 11) jump from 11th to fourth and Kevin Farrell's KF 10 rise from 10th to fifth.

Kevin Barry, a native of Corbally, Co Limerick, but a resident of Dun Laoghaire, has a fair idea of what David Maune is going through - he led the 1998 Golf Masters for nine weeks, but finished up in 10th position.

This year, though, Kevin's father Tom has been winning the battle of the Barrys. Back in week six he won himself a four-ball and this week he has a team in 24th place on the overall leaderboard, £80,000 ahead of Kevin's 48th placed line-up, Avalon Sunset.

But now Kevin has a four-ball to match his father's, after In To The Music (we take it he's a Van Morrison devotee) finished top of the weekly leaderboard (their top earners were Irish Open runner-up Angel Cabrera, Darcy, Singh and Gary Orr).

We'd like to think that Tom Murray would, one day, win a fourball but the omens aren't good. "When I am filling in my players' weekly contributions every Thursday on my PC chart, I find I have developed a real antagonism towards some of them - if only they heard the names I call them as I muse over their efforts."

So wrote our disillusioned Raheny manager this week. Every year Tom enters teams called The Cuckoos, The Cranes and The Corncrakes and every year, without exception, they fail to take flight and trouble the upper regions of our leaderboard.

"I'd be better off with a few club 24 handicappers playing for me rather than these so-called pros." Four of Tom's "pros" - Peter O'Malley, Mark McNulty, Brad Faxon and Mathias Gronberg - have so far produced 40 zeros and nine missed cuts between them, and we're only in week 18 of the competition.

We mention Tom's troubles partly as an attempt to cheer up Geoff Bourke of Moville, Co Donegal, and to show him that there are some Golf Masters' managers worse off than himself. Mind you, there weren't many who had a less productive week that Geoff's Tom-Tom Tom's.

Hovering menacingly in seventh place overall last week, five of the Tom-Tom Tom's line-up went in to action last Thursday - Padraig Harrington and Peter Mitchell at the Irish Open and Steve Pate, Tim Herron and Paul Goydos at the Western Open. But, all five missed the cut, the team earned just £3,000 and fell to 20th place. Maybe Geoff should rename them the Tom-Tom Tom Murray's. We'll watch their form with interest at the Loch Lomond and the Greater Milwaukee Open, week 19's tournaments.