If at first you don't succeed try five more times and, with a bit of good fortune, you might get to Tulfarris in the end. Isn't that right Michael Delaney? Week one? Ninth. Week two? 15th. Week six? Second (just £1,000 short of a fourball-winning total). Week seven? Fifth. Week eight? Fifth. Week 13? Lucky for some.
"My God, I've looked forward to this call for five years," said Delaney, the secretary of the Leinster Council of the GAA, when we tracked him down to tell him he'd won our weekly prize with his Trainspotters' line-up ("I live near a train station, hence the name"). We did well to get him too. "You're ringing the Leinster Council GAA office and it's the height of the ticket season so there are usually about five or six layers of people you have to get through before you get to me," he said. While we had him we were tempted to ask if he had any spares, but we resisted - ethics and all that (stop laughing at the back).
Wesley Fourball won their manager a bumper £442,500 at the Volvo PGA Championship (a bonus tournament) and the Memorial, surpassing our previous highest score of the year, Noel Kelly's £431,500 back in week four. With 185 of our 237 players in action, the average weekly score topped the £100,000 mark, a rare enough occurrence. Wesley Fourball was one of three teams to earn over £400,000 this week and, after his experiences to date, Michael Delaney will know exactly how Paddy O'Dwyer of Drogheda and Clive Tyner of Delgany are feeling right now. Polo shirts all round. All three teams had the winner of the Volvo PGA, Colin Montgomerie, along with Darren Clarke and Richard Green (who took a share of second and fifth, respectively), in common but while Paddy had Nick O'Hern (who took a share of 11th at the Volvo PGA) and Clive had Mike Weir (fourth in Ohio), Michael had BOTH. Just to complete Michael's week his team jumped to 30th overall.
No change at the top of the overall leaderboard this week with Shane Lee of Warrenpoint and Brendan Reck of Donegal Town still first and second but Dermot Burke (Portmarnock) is up from 12th to third, Martin Watts (Navan Road) up to sixth from 17th while auld Lester Piggott himself, Paul Sheehan (our 1998 winner) is timing his run very nicely - Plum Bob has risen from 24th to ninth overall, with You're Dancing making the most spectacular leap of all, jumping 31 places to 10th.
Eight of our top 10 teams have Montgomerie in their line-up, with Alistair Forsyth and Mark Brooks the next most popular players, in six teams each, followed by Paul McGinley, who appears in five. The two managers who don't have Montgomerie - Paul Ryan and Sean O'Hanlon - have a reasonable enough substitute: one Tiger Woods.
Actually, it's fast approaching the stage where we'll have to insist that if you have Monty or Tiger on board you can only have one other player to complete your line-up. Put it this way: the pair have won more between them so far than the bottom 67 players on our list.
Onwards we go this week to the English Open at the Forest of Arden and the Kemper Open in Maryland. Bear in mind, though, that there's only two weeks to go to the US Open, the second of the season's majors, and your second opportunity to earn double the regular prize money. If you have any transfers left, start planning now.
