It's not a tactic that is likely to keep him on top for the rest of the season, but doing nothing did just fine this week for overall leader Pat Callanan. No transfers, no huge impact on his lead, no sweat.
"If I can get to the US PGA (tournament) and still be relevant, that would be good," was Callanan's attitude when he took first place from David Tallon in week 18. To that end, it would suit him fine to have all of the intervening tournaments cancelled.
That would keep his thousands of pursuers at bay. The next best thing is to have players who are not on the Golf Masters roster win the counting tournaments and large chunks of the Golf Masters money.
Tobias Dier at 200 to 1 in the Dutch Open and JP Hayes at 66 to 1 in the John Deere Classic fitted the second part of that bill very nicely, and Robert Gamez, Mike Heinen, Jamie Spence and Alastair Forsyth were others not on our roster to enjoy a profitable week.
Our week-18 competition to select the optimum Golf Masters team produced a four-way tie, with David Maune, Robert Webster, Rory Horner and Eamonn Keegan all picking Eamon Darcy, Phil Mickelson, Jerry Kelly, Soren Hansen, Bradley Dredge, Eduardo Romero and Len Mattiace for earnings of €2,504,714. The tie-breaker is to select the top Golf Masters earner for this week. Keegan went for Colin Montgomerie but all the others selected Phil Mickelson. So if Monty does better than Phil, the windcheater will be Keegan's, otherwise we will set a tougher, sudden-death test next week.
