AFTER THE weekend he had, Noel Connors probably has as much of a fondness for Sawgrass as Rory McIlroy – our Kildare manager dropping from first to fifth on the overall leaderboard after three of his Antislice line-up finished outside the top 50 and another missed the cut.
Noel, as it proved, was the only top 10 manager not to break the 100 points mark at The Players Championship, but Ben Curtis (who took a share of the runners-up spot) and Kevin Na (who tied for seventh) kept him afloat, the pair contributing 86 of his 96-point total.
Gavin Doyle’s Bunch of Albatrossers fared worse again, not least McIlroy, whose missed cut cost the team two points. A Bunch of Bogies might, in truth, have been a more appropriate moniker after their Sawgrass experience, Curtis winning 54 of their 62 total. And with that Gavin fell from joint second to 14th.
Of our leading contenders, no one leapt higher than Kay Cully of Navan, sky-rocketing from 20th to second in week six, thanks in no small part to having the winner of the tournament, Matt Kuchar, on board, as well as two of the players who took a share of second, Zach Johnson and Rickie Fowler. A stellar selection, it has to be said. Kay, then, picked up 204 points for her week’s work, the top scoring manager in the top 10.
Bryan Crowley’s 164 points haul, though, was enough to see him take over top spot on the overall leaderboard, having been fifth last week. Curtis, yet again, Luke Donald (sixth) and David Toms (tied for 10th) were his leading performers, with Jonathan Byrd and Ian Poulter adding another 36 points between them.
Bryan, from Carrigaline, Co Cork, is just two points clear of Kay, with another four managers passing the 600 points mark in week six.
Jim Power, of Terenure, has a bit of a way to go before he troubles our leading managers, his Whitehall team ranked at 327th overall, 221 points adrift of Bryan’s total, but if he has a few more weeks like he had at The Players Championship then he’ll close the gap in no time at all.
Not only had he Kuchar in his line-up, Jim also had three of the four players who took a share of second, Johnson, Fowler and Martin Laird. Adam Scott (tied for 15th) brought in another 16 points, with only Ben Crane letting the side down – and he only missed the cut by a single stroke.
With 270 points, then, Jim is our weekly winner, that much craved goodie bag of golf merchandise on its way to Terenure. Can he maintain the momentum at the Byron Nelson Championship, this week’s counting tournament?
