Golf Masters 2008 News
Cink proves most popular acquisition since the start
REMEMBER
WHEN those lovely SSIA’s matured and new kitchens, new cars and even new golf clubs
were all the rage. God be with the days of the Celtic Tiger!
The credit
crunch may have squeezed the Irish economy but Tiger Woods’ knee surgery means there’s
SSIA-quantities of money sloshing around in Golf Masters circles.
If you
have designs on any of our overall prizes, you simply can’t have €7 million worth
of talent in rehab and nearly half of Woods’ original employers have let him go.
With
Tiger a raging hot favourite for our season-opener at
Augusta
, it was no surprise to find him as our fifth most popular
player, appearing in 2,960 teams.
That
figure has now dropped to 1,576 which is a decrease of 43.38 per cent.
Only
Toru Taniguchi has proved to me more of a liability in percentage terms and he only
started with one manager.
Joe O’Reilly
has since decided that there are better ways to spend €4.5 million and it is the
first time that anyone at Tour Headquarters can remember a player being shunned
by every single manager.
Stewart
Cink has no fears in that regard. His consistent season has made him our most popular
acquisition since the start of the campaign.
He now
appears on 281 teams, a 149 per cent increase from the original 113.
Trevor
Immelman and Michael Lorenzo-Vera are the two other players to more than double
their number of employers and only seven players have featured in no transfers – Richard Sterne, Jonathan Byrd, Pat Perez, Charles Warren, Felipe Aguilar, Stuart
Manley and Iain Pyman.
e-mail:
golfmasters@irish-times.ie
