Sergio Garcia, reigning champion of the Augusta Masters, has been named “European Tour Hilton Player of the Year” and receives this prestigious award for the first time. The Spaniard has enjoyed one of the best years of his career. He has won three European Tour titles including his first Major, winning in April at Augusta National after a tie-breaker with his friend and Ryder Cup teammate, Englishman Justin Rose, becoming the third Spaniard to wear the “Green Jacket” following in the footsteps of Seve Ballesteros and José Mari Olazábal. Interestingly, Sergio’s triumph at Augusta coincided with the celebration of what would have been Seve Ballesteros’ 60th birthday. In recognition of his achievements in 2017, a panel composed of specialized journalists has named him “European Tour Hilton Player of the Year”, an award that Ballesteros received in 1986, 1988 and 1991.
For Sergio García, it is “a great honor and the culmination of an incredible year on and off the course, which I will never forget”. In July he married Angela Akins and a few months later they announced that their first child, a girl, will be born in March 2018. “I’m happy for this recognition, especially knowing that I was competing with the likes of Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm, all of whom are great players who have also had an exceptional year. The fact that the five of us are the first in the Race to Dubai shows the strength of the European Tour and, in particular, the European players. I hope we continue like this for the Ryder Cup in Paris.
2017 could not have started in a better way for Sergio: in February he achieved his first victory leading from start to finish the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. He won by three strokes ahead of Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, winner of the Open Championship and number one in the Race to Dubai in 2016, successor of England’s Danny Willett at the Emirates Club, who two months later put the “Green Jacket” on Sergio, who became the 26th European to win a Major and fulfilled the expectations he had raised by finishing second behind Tiger Woods at the US PGA in 1999, when he received the “Sir Henry Cotton Debutante of the Year” award.
Garcia won his first major after 74 attempts, but before that he had more than proved his immense talent by racking up no less than 22 top ten finishes. The wait was worth it: Sergio and Justin starred in an indelible final that will go down in the history of the sport. At the end of the third round they were tied for the lead and the fight for the victory was decided in a playoff after 18 sublime holes, in which they finished tied again with 69 strokes. After several years of suffering, Sergio’s time had finally come: he holed a four-meter putt for birdie that gave him the longed-for victory.
In October, during the second day of the Andalucía Valderrama Masters, a tournament hosted by Sergio through his Foundation, the player from Borriol was named “Honorary Member of the European Tour” and “Honorary Member of the Real Club Valderrama”, two awards that made him “very excited”. And, to round off a dream season, on Sunday he lifted the trophy in his “beloved Valderrama” by beating the Dutchman Joost Luiten by one stroke with a round of 67 and 12 under par overall, after another epic duel.
The Spaniard finishes the year as number four in the Race to Dubai presented by Rolex, thanks also to a second place in the BMW International Open and a tied fourth in the DP World Tour Championship. For Keith Pelley, CEO of the European Tour, “Sergio is a wonderful ambassador for our sport and is an incredible talent; I don’t think any of the many fans who follow him around the world were taken by surprise by his victory at the Masters, an extraordinary achievement to which he has added another two titles in 2017, completing a sensational season that makes him worthy of the recognition as the best ‘European Tour Hilton Player of the Year'”.
On behalf of the panel that gave him the award, Iain Carter, BBC golf correspondent and president of the Golf Journalists Association, said that “this season we have seen some excellent performances by European players, such as Tommy Fleetwood, number one in Europe, or Justin Rose, who has had a spectacular end to the year; however, we believe that Sergio has had the best year of his life, which says a lot about a career as long as his. No other player we considered has won three titles, and one of them the Masters. It was a unanimous and very popular decision. Despite the merits of the other nominees, Sergio is a well-deserved winner of the award”.
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