Golf Masters: Week one of the new season and already the stocks of headache tablets at Tour Headquarters are running low.

And we're not talking regular tablets. We're talking super- sized, titanium-faced, headache tablets.

At the best of times we hate a Monday finish. It squeezes us for the week inducing the sort of tightness you feel when you box an uphill putt four feet past the hole. Oh you'll get it in eventually but things should never have got so difficult.

In week one it is particularly troublesome. There are 13,807 new teams to get to grips with (up 16.4 per cent on 2004), the inevitable glitches with the new software and one must calm those managers who are already in contact with what they believe to be the most deserving reason ever invented for them to get a Cutter & Buck shirt.

A Sunday finish, preferably in a country east of Greenwich puts us in the comfort zone. But we felt we couldn't trust the weather in Jakarta and kept the Indonesian Open off the schedule. Even with the time difference against us, The Players Championship in the Sunshine State seemed like a safer bet.

So when tournament director Mark Russell declared last Sunday that he was considering a Tuesday finish at Sawgrass, we groaned. "We look at it as a major championship and we've got $8 million we're trying to give away," said Russell. Well we look at it as the most popular Fantasy Sports game in Ireland and we've 30,000 we're trying to give away.

There hasn't been a Tuesday finish since the 1980 Joe Garagiola-Tucson Open. We have two newspaper columns to write based on this and did we mention the 13,807 new teams to deal with? Why not cut the thing to 54 holes and be done with it? Russell was not for shifting but the storm clouds were and we got a Monday night conclusion.

That left just enough time to crunch the numbers, fix the mistakes, crunch again and declare 14-year old Thomas O'Keeffe from Galway our first leader of 2005 and our first winner of the fourball at Druids Heath, part of the Druids Glen complex which won European golf resort of the year in 2004.

Rory McIlroy may have been the coolest teenage golfer in the West this week but that surely makes O'Keeffe a close second. He left it until Thursday to enter his Dream Seven selection and thus knew that Peter Jacobsen and JL Lewis had started well in Sawgrass. He chose Luke Donald and Brett Quigley because they have been in good form. Fred Funk was selected on the basis that he lives nearby and probably knew the course well. Michael Hoey got the nod because somebody Irish was needed but why, Thomas, did you pick Steve Lowery who had missed the cut in all eight of his previous tournaments this year?

"I was kind of stuck, I just picked him, I don't know why." Whether a lucky or a skilful selection, Lowery's 40,800 for tied 12th was just what O'Keeffe needed to see off the challenges of joint runners-up, Seán Alley and Aidan McCague.

It's double action this week with the Portuguese Open, the Bellsouth Classic and hopefully no rain and no headaches.