A few words of explanation. We who write the Golf Masters columns neither draw up the player roster nor assign the valuations.
We don't even know who does. The first we know of the deliberations is when we read the registration details in The Irish Times. Whatever committee performs the task must be every bit as conservative as a fourball of GAA past-presidents.
Sure the British Open is a prestigious title, but winning it should not necessarily give a player a Golf Masters value way above what his normal level of play merits. What you need in this game is players who perform consistently, not some flash-in-the-pan who burns brightly for four days in July and is invisible for the rest of the year. In short, you don't need Ben Curtis.
The British Open champion comes this year with a €3.4 million price tag, while likely better performers such as Marcel Siem are a snip at €0.5m. Seven Marcel Siem's for one Ben Curtis? Yes please.
If this logic proved beyond our valuations committee, it certainly didn't escape our ever-savvy managers who made Siem our eighth most popular selection. We do feel that Mark O'Meara has been overbought on foot of winning in Dubai, but at least at €0.5m he didn't eat too much into the budgets.
The 10 most and least popular players are:
MOST POPULAR PLAYERS
Name ... Value ... No of Teams
Mark O'Meara 0.5m 4,137
Peter Lawrie 1.3m 2,783
John Daly 1.6m 2,401
Paul McGinley 1.8m 2,167
Padraig Harrington 4.6m 1,909
Ian Woosnam 0.5m 1,866
Darren Clarke 4.5m 1,851
Marcel Siem 0.5m 1,808
Paul Azinger 0.5m 1,542
Heath Slocum 0.5m 1,389
LEAST POPULAR
Name ... Value ... No of Teams
David Smail 1.6m 15
Ben Curtis 3.4m 17
Dan Forsman 1.7m 17
Ricardo Gonzalez 1.9m 20
Shaun Micheel 3.5m 21
Stephen Scahill 1.8m 22
Rocco Mediate 3.2m 24
Toshimitsu Izawa 2.3m 29
Jean Hugo 0.8m 30
Richard Bland 0.6m 34
