It started and finished as a good idea, but last Friday evening, as Padraig Harrington signed for a 72 and Darren Clarke struggled to make the cut, many of our Golf Masters managers must have been wondering about the wisdom of using precious transfers to target the extra money available to home players in the Irish and European Opens.

Rarely has Tiger Woods been so out of favour. Over 120 managers dispensed with the world number one during last week's transfer period, and the majority, including all of the top nine on our overall leaderboard, replaced him with either Clarke or Harrington. By Sunday evening they had been vindicated. Ireland's leading pair were a combined 23 under for the weekend and each picked up Golf Masters earnings of £105,000. Even with Woods in the field for this week's Western Open, that looks like good business.

There's a polo shirt on the way to Seamus Meehan in Monaghan for gaining a top-10 position without using a single transfer in the first 17 weeks of the competition. All above him have dabbled in the market, although that doesn't mean that there is consensus on who the best available players are.

While nine of the top-10 teams include Robert Karlsson, there are 28 different players employed on these teams. Of course, managers are always looking for the little gems who will prove outstanding value for money before everyone else cops on. We won't reveal who has got whom, but to add a bit of intrigue and give some encouragement to the chasing pack, these are the 16 players currently included in only one of the top-10 teams: Jorge Berendt, Desvonde Botes, Elliot Boult, Mark Brooks, Mark Calcavecchia, John Daly, David Higgins, Jerry Kelly, JL Lewis, Frank Lickliter, Phil Mickelson, Nick O'Hern, Chris Perry, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Esteban Toledo.