{"id":21556,"date":"2017-02-21T10:11:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T10:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/royal-ancient-honour-for-olazabal\/"},"modified":"2017-02-21T10:11:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T10:11:23","slug":"royal-ancient-honour-for-olazabal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/royal-ancient-honour-for-olazabal\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal & Ancient Honour for Olaz\u00e1bal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dual US Masters champion Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal has accepted an invitation to become an honorary member of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am thrilled and extremely proud to become an honorary member,\u201d said the Spanish star. \u201cWinning The R&A\u2019s amateur championships and the silver medal in The Open were huge achievements for me and gave me a tremendous boost in the early stages of my career. It is a privilege to follow in the footsteps of so many of golf\u2019s great champions in becoming part of the club\u2019s celebrated history.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Announcing the honor, the R&A noted that Olaz\u00e1bal was one of the world\u2019s most successful and popular golfers, winning 30 professional tournaments during his career, including the Masters in 1994 and 1999. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2009. <\/p>\n

\u201cBorn in Fuenterrabia (Spain) in 1966, Olaz\u00e1bal made an early impression as an amateur golfer, winning the Italian Open Amateur Championship, Spanish Open Amateur Championship and Boys Amateur Championship at Glenbervie in 1983. The following season, aged 18, the Spaniard defeated Colin Montgomerie 5&4 in the 36-hole final of The Amateur Championship at Formby and successfully defended the Spanish Amateur title. <\/p>\n

\u201cA year later he won the Silver Medal as the leading amateur in The Open at Royal St George\u2019s and the British Youths Open Amateur Championship at Ganton. That makes Olaz\u00e1bal the only amateur golfer to have won all of the R&A medals for which he was eligible to compete. <\/p>\n

\u201cOlaz\u00e1bal also represented the Continent of Europe in both the St Andrews Trophy (1984) and Jacques Leglise Trophy (1981, 1982, 1983) international matches against Great Britain and Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoining the professional ranks in 1986, he finished second behind close friend Severiano Ballesteros in the European Tour order of merit, and repeated the feat three years later. He went on to win 23 tournaments on the European Tour. He would also win on the PGA Tour six times and twice on the Japan Golf Tour. <\/p>\n

\u201cOlaz\u00e1bal secured his first major championship in 1994 after winning the Masters with a nine-under-par total, two strokes ahead of American Tom Lehman. In doing so, he became the only winner of The Amateur Championship in the post-war era to win a major championship, a record that still stands. Five years later, he won his second Masters title. <\/p>\n

\u201cBetween 1987 and 2006, Olaz\u00e1bal made seven appearances for Europe in the Ryder Cup, winning on three occasions. He went on to captain Europe in the \u2018Miracle of Medinah\u2019 match in 2012 when the team, facing a 10-6 deficit on the final day, rallied in the singles matches to win 14\u00bd-13\u00bd against the United States.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also honored by the R&A at the same time as Olaz\u00e1bal was Bridget Jackson, who played in the Curtis Cup for Great Britain and Ireland on three occasions, was selected as an England international nine times, and has served as chair and president of the English Ladies Golf Association and president of the Ladies\u2019 Golf Union.<\/p>\n

Photos courtesy of the R&A (Bridget Jackson) and Getty Images (Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dual US Masters champion Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal has accepted an invitation to become an honorary member of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. \u201cI am thrilled and extremely proud to become an honorary member,\u201d said the Spanish star. \u201cWinning The R&A\u2019s amateur championships and the silver medal in The Open were huge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}