It has always been an ambition of ours that one day one of our Golf Masters managers will turn professional, win his tour card (for Europe or America, we're not fussy) and make it on to our list of players, second only in value to veteran Tiger Woods. And when he sinks the winning putt in the Ryder Cup he'll give us a wave on the telly and then publicly acknowledge the part we played in his golfing career when talking to the world's press.
"Ah, give us a chance, would you," pleaded Greg Bowden when we let him in on our little dream. Well, we don't want to put any undue pressure on this week's four-ball winner, from Straffan, Co Kildare, but we WILL be shattered if he lets us down. He is, after all, on the current Irish under-18 panel, earning his call-up last year after winning four of his five matches for Leinster.
Greg, therefore, will set golfing standards at Tulfarris that, frankly, we suspect will be so lofty the rest of this year's four-ball winners will seem even less gifted than us. Not that he'll be able to take up his prize for a while. Why? "My Leaving starts five weeks tomorrow," he said, with a level of enthusiasm normally reserved for a visit to the dentist. Accompanying Greg to Tulfarris will be his parents and big brother Warrick, and we mean big - the former St Mary's College and Irish youths players is a prop with Kildare rugby club Barnhall, so we won't be picking a fight with him.
What was most impressive about Bungle's Best's performance this week was that the team won £312,383 without the help of its most expensive members, Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington. In fact the total cost of the five competing players - Spanish and Houston Open winners Robert Allenby and Brian Davis, Niclas Fasth (joint seventh in Spain), Mark Brooks and Esteban Toldedo (joint fifth and 17th in Houston), was just £3.6 million. This Bowden fella knows his golf. (Mind you, so does the fella he beat to the four-ball, our 1998 winner Paul Sheehan).
"Bungle as in the cuddly fella from Rainbow, the children's programme," we asked. "The very same," he said. "I got it as a nickname when I was working at the K Club - the fella working with me was called Zippy."
Speaking of bungles: one of our managers will soon have more Golf Masters polo shirts than we do, after dispatching with Robert Allenby's services on the eve of the Houston Open . . . just a month after firing Vijay Singh days before he won the Masters. Two more managers suffered the same fate, but as you know by now we're loathe to add to such misery by naming names.
Ronan McGuckin (Banagher, Co Offaly) and David Comiskey (Monkstown, Dublin) had much better luck than Ray McConville (Malahide, Dublin), Michael McManamon (Tallaght - our overall winner four years ago) and Laurence Long Jnr (Naas) - they transferred in Brian Davis (who is only our 104th most popular player, appearing in 393 teams) just in time to profit from his first European Tour title. Robert Allenby, who is in 4,034 of our line-ups, is our third most hired player.
London-based John McManamon jumps from fifth to first overall this week, just ahead of Shane Lee of Warrenpoint, Co Down and Bungle Bowden himself. All three are some distance ahead of the overall average score to date, £502,391 - the week's average score was just £65,990. This week's Golf Masters' tournaments are the Compaq Classic of New Orleans and the French Open in Paris.
