Euro tour awards success

The success of European Tour Members across the globe in 2010 has been abundantly reflected as the year draws to a close with the announcement of several prestigious individual Awards and recognition for The 2010 Ryder Cup Team.

Europe’s Ryder Cup Team won the accolade of BBC Team of the Year award while Captain Colin Montgomerie collected Coach of the Year during a wonderful evening for European golf in Birmingham. The victorious European Ryder Cup Team, represented at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show by Montgomerie, Ross Fisher, Graeme McDowell and Lee Westwood, won the Team award, which recognised Europe’s 14 ½ to 13 ½ victory over the United States in Wales.

Montgomerie, who also won the Coach of the Year Award, said: “It is an honour on behalf of the Team, 12 great, great men of golf. We had on that team Lee Westwood, the World Number One golfer, our US Open Champion Graeme McDowell and US PGA Champion Martin Kaymer.”

McDowell and Westwood were also among the ten contenders for the individual BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award which was won by jockey AP McCoy. Although neither figured in the top three, it was the only moment of disappointment for the Northern Irishman, who followed up his joint award with Kaymer as The 2010 Race to Dubai European Tour Golfer of the Year by collecting two more accolades.

McDowell received plaudits from those who comment on the game on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, he was a clear winner of the Golf Writers Trophy, voted for by the members of the Association of Golf Writers and also the AIB Irish Golf Writers’ Association Awards, while the Golf Writers’ Association of America named him as their Player of the Year.

“I am hugely honoured to win such a prestigious award and especially in a year when European golf as a whole has achieved such amazing things,” McDowell said.

Germany’s Bernhard Langer, who won five times on the US Champions Tour, including back-to-back Majors in the Senior Open and US Senior Open, was a runaway choice for Champions Tour Player of the Year, with 94 percent of the vote to six percent for the American Fred Couples.

Maybank Malaysian Open champion, Noh Seung-yul of Korea, won two prestigious titles when he was officially crowned the youngest Asian Tour Order of Merit champion at 19 years and 204 days and named the Players’ Player of the Year at the Asian Tour Awards Gala.

European Senior Tour Order of Merit winner, Boonchu Ruangkit, was honoured with the prestigious Asian Tour’s Special Achievement Award 2010 for his remarkable accomplishments this season and Swede Rikard Karlberg was the Asian Tour Rookie of the Year.