It happened to a young man from Limerick before and now it seems to be happening Edward Staunton from Tipperary. Your players give their all to get you to the top of our mammoth overall leaderboard and then they all but chuck it in. Meanwhile the pack are gaining. Slowly, perhaps, for not many of our other leaders are exactly flying just now but closing nevertheless. Staunton has led the race for our £10,000 prize for several weeks now but recently the gap has been steadily narrowed with this week's advantage over second placed Ciaran O'Toole and his Chislers standing at just about £80,000 - half the lead he enjoyed seven days ago.
The fact that Ian Woosnam, Stephen Ames and Retief Goosen managed to pick up just £1,000 between them was a setback to the Munsterman while only the efforts of Jim Furyk, who won £41,333 thanks to his share of seventh place at the Sprint International, prevented it from being an even more miserable week.
In all Woosnam's Wonders picked up £81,750 between the Sprint and the Scandanavian Masters with £16,333 apiece from Darren Clarke and David Carter as well as a modest £6,750 contribution from the team's star performer, Jose Maria Olazabal completing the tally.
The Chislers, meanwhile, riding high on the performances of Furyk, Scott McCarron, Roger Chapman and Lee Westwood and benefiting from the fact that every player chipped in at least £6,750 (Olazabal again) bagged a total of £166,750 between the two tournaments to take over the lead of the chasing posse.
O'Toole's team no becomes the second to creep over the £3 million in earnings mark and it now holds a £99,000 margin over the first of Tony Munaghan's two top 10 teams, the Spiders From Mars in third.
That £3 million figure is just short of double the average team score in the competition as a whole which is currently £1,582,338.40 while the definitively middle of the road figure for Week 23 by itself was £70,149.30 which, in turn, is less than a quarter of the figure achieved by this week's runaway winner Glen Walsh from Cliftonville Road, Glasnevin in Dublin.
Walsh's Wonder Boys lived up to their name in Week 23 taking the top spot by some £34,000 thanks, in no small part to their owner following rule number one for those hoping to bag a fourball at Mount Juliet - include both weekly winners in your team.
With Phil Mickelson and Joakim Haeggman providing £200,000, the rest of fairly straightforward. Padraig Harrington added £47,500, Chapman tossed in £38,000 and Larry Mize earned £41,333 all of which meant that their Dublin-based boss could allow Olle Karlsson and Don Pooley to put their feet up for the weekend and still collect a day out in Kilkenny.
Many thanks, meanwhile, to whichever reader it was who finally ran into Brandt Jobe and pointed him in the direction of Colorado. Last week we issued an appeal aimed at getting some of our less active players on the course and Jobe's appearance at the Sprint International where he picked up £500 after missing the cut means that only David Feherty has yet to get off the mark on this year's Masters tour.
At the other end of the value for money table is Retief Goosen who, with £434,250 to his name to date and a price tag of £1.2 million (obviously we can take no account of commercial earnings in our humble competition) is currently the greatest bargain buy.
Next in line are Jim Furyk, David Carter and Ross McFarlane before we get to Jose Maria Olazabal (£604,743.75 earned for a £2 million fee) whose successful return to action after a long-term back injury has made a key contribution to a large number of our overall leaders.
