GOLF:THE PICKINGS weren't exactly rich for our managers in week 10 of the competition, when the Italian Open and the St Jude Classic were our counting tournaments, with just 24 of our 76 players actually turning up for duty – and five of them missed the cut.
Claire Deasy, who led the competition (with two different teams) from the beginning until Mary Ryan dislodged her from the top of the overall leaderboard last week, is indebted to her captain Francesco Molinari for keeping New Bike on the road, the Italian’s top-10 finish at his home tournament accounting for 430 of the 457 points the team collected.
Claire drops to fourth as a result of that paltry enough total, now 484 points off the lead, but most of her rivals didn’t fare much better, no team in the top 20 breaking the 1,000 points mark in week 10.
Declan Basquille’s Cribber’s Corner moves up from third to second, captain Matteo Manassero (also top 10 in Italy) his leading scorer, with Maurice Sheehan’s Azalea rising from seventh to third thanks largely to the efforts of his captain Molinari and Manassero.
Bis a Bis, though, became the first of our line-ups to pass the 12,000 points barrier, 745 of them picked up at the weekend – all but five of the points were earned by Molinari, captain Lee Westwood (tied for 11th in Memphis) and Manassero.
When you consider the highest total you could have amassed in week 10 was 1,970 points – ie if you had Italian Open winner Robert Rock as your captain and the top points winners from each of the other groups – then Dylan Loughnane’s winning figure of 1,747 is more than a little impressive.
Frosty’s XIII could even afford team member Sergio Garcia missing the cut at the St Jude Classic, with captain Camilo Villegas (tied for third), Robert Karlsson (who finished runner-up after losing a play-off to Harrison Frazar) and Westwood more than compensating at our American tournament, and Rock and Manassero doing rather nicely in Italy.
Dylan earns himself a Fantasy Golf polo shirt, while Helen Mulhall, half way through the monthly competition, is on course for a round of golf and a night at one of the country’s top golfing resorts.
Helen’s Hellmole 3 top the current monthly leaderboard, Manassero, Villegas and Retief Goosen her star men in week 10, but she won’t be packing her bag just yet – Trevor Gypps trails by a mere 16 points, with a trifling 100 points separating first and ninth, Karl Booth’s Blind Optimism.
If the US Open is as closely fought an affair then nobody will be complaining. Our third bonus tournament of the competition should give a sizeable boost to most of our teams’ totals, although if it all goes horribly wrong there’s no other tournament in week 11 to rescue you.
Enough of that negative thinking, though, we prefer Karl’s Blind Optimism. Happy points-hunting to you all at the Congressional Country Club.
To access the competition on our website (irishtimes.com/fantasygolf) each week you need to enter a pin code – this week’s code is ‘hardpan’.
