McDowell’s dream season just keeps getting better

THE HONOURS keep coming for Graeme McDowell.

The latest accolade came yesterday when he won the prestigious Association of Golf Writers’ Golfer of the Year award.

Joe Carr was the first Irish player to be chosen for the award after he captured the first of his three British Amateur Championships in 1953 and he was succeeded in 1958 by Harry Bradshaw; Christy O’Connor Senior in 1977 and Pádraig Harrington in 2007 and ‘08.

Interestingly, Carr captained the British & Irish Eisenhower Trophy team in 1964 and his son, Roddy, was a member of the 1971 B & I Walker Cup that also gained the writers’ favour.

McDowell, now relaxing at his Lake Nona home in Orlando, is keeping his fingers crossed that the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award will also come his way on Sunday night. This will be decided by a poll of BBC viewers with most believing that it’s a two horse race between McDowell and jockey Tony McCoy.

While McDowell supporters will point to his four tournament victories in 2010 along with his pivotal role in Europe’s Ryder Cup triumph, he is the first to acknowledge that McCoy’s record as Britain’s almost perennial number one National Hunt jockey and more significantly his magnificent first Grand National win aboard JP McManus’s Don’t Push It, makes him a very worthy rival.

Whether or not the vote goes McDowell’s way, he may look back upon the Golf Writers’ award as the most significant of all, especially because of the opposition he overcame.

“I am hugely honoured to win such a prestigious award and especially in a year when European golf has achieved such amazing things. To win a major championship and hole the winning putt in the Ryder Cup has been a life changing experience. I feel lucky and can’t really get my head around it.

“Every golfer wants to win a major but the Ryder Cup was from another stratosphere. I have never been so nervous. That 16th hole were the three greatest shots of my career, particularly as I was told on the fairway before I hit my second shot that a half point would not be enough and that I needed to win my match. It’s been a phenomenal few years for European golf and especially in Britain and Ireland.”

European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie finished second in the poll followed by USPGA champion and Race to Dubai order of merit winner Martin Kaymer and current world number one Lee Westwood.

Further evidence of the standard of candidates is provided by the serious consideration also given to Laura Davies, winner of five tournament on the Ladies European Tour; Rory McIlroy and Bernhard Langer.

McDowell plans to play the first tournament of the 2011 US PGA Tour in Hawaii in the first week of January, and he hopes to continue his form into the new year.

“I will adopt the same attitude in 2011,” he promised. “How I perform will be heavily scrutinised and that is understandable but I will never try to compare it with 2010. I am aware of the pitfalls — such as complacency and expectation — but I also know that I have a huge amount of room for improvement, especially in and around the greens.”