WELL, IF Ernie Els wasn’t happy with the Wentworth greens last weekend, suggesting they had all the consistency of a bouncy castle – although European Tour chief executive George O’Grady revealed his language was a touch more “intemperate” than that – more than a few of our managers were perfectly content with the conditions. Not least Jack Casey.
Jack’s VI, it would be true to say, was nowhere to be seen in the competition until his team set sail in the PGA Championship and, after finally hitting upon a near perfect VI, he amassed a rather outstanding 250 points – almost half as many as he’d won in the first seven weeks of the competition combined.
And that total was enough to hold off Keith Beirne, Pamela O’Rourke and Kevin Mullins, who had half-decent tournaments themselves – three of 110 managers to win 200 points or more in week eight. Impressive.
Jack didn’t just have the winner of the PGA, Luke Donald, he also the luxury of having on board the two men who tied for second, Paul Lawrie and Justin Rose, the trio winning him 202 points between them. Branden Grace, who came fifth, brought that tally to 238, George Coetzee chipping in with another 14 points, only Nicolas Colsaerts misfiring by missing the cut.
Up to 621st, then, goes Jack, which, admittedly, still leaves him 535 adrift of Kieron Hyland’s total, but he did at least narrow the gap on our overall leader by over 100 points at Wentworth.
Rose was Kieron’s star man, followed by Grace and Alvaro Quiros, who took a share of 10th, but Lee Westwood and Robert Rock both finished outside the top 20, and the less said about Marcus Fraser the better (yes, he cost Kieron two points).
Kay Culley and Michael Connolly both moved above Bryan Crowley in to second and third, respectively, Bryan indebted to Donald and Ian Poulter (joint 10th) for their efforts – his team total was 114 points, 110 of which were contributed by the pair.
Keep on eye, meanwhile, on Ken Coffey from Cahir, up from 22nd to fifth, like Kieron benefiting from having the top three in his line-up. So, along with Kay and Michael, he reaped the rewards from Donald’s latest triumph, and the world number one is in action again this week, at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village.
With seven of the world’s top 10 – Donald, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, Rose, Hunter Mahan, Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker (Lee Westwood, Jason Dufner and Matt Kuchar are missing) – there are tricky transfer choices for our managers. Whatever happens, hopefully their mood will be lighter after the Memorial than Ernie’s was after the PGA.
