Compare the fortunes of Jose Maria Olazabal and Vijay Singh over the past fortnight. Twelve days ago Singh won the PGA Championship, the first major of his career - Olazabal missed the cut at the same tournament. Last weekend the Fijian won again, this time at the Sprint International in Colorado, while Olazabal tied for 37th at the European Open.
In Golf Masters' terms Singh's two titles in as many weeks earned him and his managers (pound sign) £300,000, compared to £12,250 won by Olazabal.
So, imagine if you had transferred the Spaniard out of your team a fortnight ago and replaced him with Singh. Take a bow, Paul Sheehan.
If inspiration hadn't struck and Paul had resisted using his fourth and last transfer to add Singh to his number one line-up, Paul 1 would now be sitting in 28th place overall, over £250,000 behind second placed Niall Murray. But, thanks to Singh's contribution to the team kitty, Paul 1 is now top of the overall leaderboard, with just five weeks and 10 tournaments to go.
Paul has now led the competition with three different teams - Pauly 2 topped the list in Week 21, Paul 8 took over the lead last week, but have now slipped to third, swapping places with Paul 1.
Apart from Singh the overall leaders had just three other players in action at the weekend - Darren Clarke (fourth at the European Open - he features in every top 10 line-up), Peter Baker (who took a share of 16th at the K Club) and Bob Estes, who missed the cut at the Sprint International.
Two of our top 10 managers had European Open winner Mathias Gronberg in their line-ups - former leader Niall Murray (who led the competition back in Week 17) has now risen from sixth to second, and Robin McNaughton, who is up from 18th to seventh overall.
Gronberg's victory has put him on top of our `best value for money' list - the £500,000 buy has earned his 948 managers £338,458. Glen Day, Estes, John Huston and Billy Mayfair follow him in the `bargain buy' top five.
Our weekly winner, Raymond Behan of Terenure in Dublin, is another Gronberg employer, only he also had the good fortune to have Miguel Angel Jimenez, Phillip Price, Clarke AND Jean Van de Velde in his RB16 line-up - that's the top four and joint seventh placed players at the European Open, making him the only manager to top the half a million pounds' earnings mark this week. As a member of Castle Golf Club Raymond was on stewarding duty at the K Club over the weekend, giving him a first hand view of his Golf Masters' employees securing him a fourball in Mount Juliet.
Commiserations AGAIN to 18-month-old Justyne Murnaghan who, last week, finished fourth on the weekly leaderboard, behind her fourball-winning father Tony . . . she's fourth, again, this week and must be close to abandoning Golf Masters' life in favour of the less stressful world of the Tellytubbies and Rugrats.
This week's tournaments are the International Open in Munich, where Robert Karlsson defends his title, and the World Series of Golf in Ohio, where Singh will be going for a hat-trick of victories.
Bad news for Robin McNaughton and Gerry Lonergan, the only top 10 managers to employ Lee Westwood. Following his withdrawal from the final round of the European Open he will miss the International Open with a hip injury. At least Gerry has one transfer left if he decides to replace Westwood in the Piltown Firsts - Robin has used up all four of his and must hope that the remaining six players in his R16 team make up for their captain's loss. Who'd be a manager?
