Tim Forton has never played a Masturds round. He is second favourite for the Low Gross, the largest question mark on the draft board, and the only player in the field whose price is a guess.
Every player in this tournament arrives carrying evidence. Five counting rounds from Lisbon, gross and net, hole by hole. Two editions of results for the four founders. A head-to-head matrix that says who beats whom and by how much.
Tim Forton arrives with a handicap index and nothing else.
He is 7.9, off a low index of five. He is president of the men's club at Redstone, where Jack Church is his vice-president. They are neighbours in Rossland and they play most days through the season.
He is originally from out east and has lived all over eastern Canada. He golfs the entire summer.
And he hits a two-hundred-yard shot close every single time — a description offered by Church, unprompted, and the only piece of technical scouting anybody has on him.
Four of the six cup sessions are played at Redstone. Forton has hit more shots there than anyone in this tournament except the man he will be measured against, and Church's assessment of their record together is unambiguous: Forton wins more of them than he loses.
That makes him second favourite for the Low Gross at 2/1, behind a man who won it last year by forty-nine shots. Six shots separate their projected totals across five rounds. Every other player in the field is at least forty-seven behind.
It also makes him, on paper, the most valuable non-Beswick pick in the draft — he wins the scramble more or less on his own, and in the two singles sessions the model has him favourite against everybody except Beswick.
The projection is a construction. It takes his index, assumes a scoring spread comparable to Church's, and produces a number. It is not evidence of anything.
If the model is generous, Forton is a 2/1 shot who never gets close and the Low Gross is over by Saturday. If it is harsh — if a man playing daily off 7.9 plays like a five when it counts — the six-shot gap disappears and the tournament runs to Monday afternoon.
There is no third possibility in which the current price is right, because the current price is an average of two very different men.
Men's night at Redstone on 23 September is a club medal worth no cup points at all. It is also the first and only sight anybody gets of Tim Forton in a scoring situation before the tournament begins, and both captains will be in the field.
Every price on the book is provisional until that card is signed.
He is the second favourite in a two-horse race, and nobody has ever seen him run.