Miguel Angel Jim\u00e9nez has been named the first winner of The European Tour Race to Dubai Golfer of the Month for the 2014 season following his record-breaking start in December.<\/p>\n
The Golfer of the Month Award, now in its 30th anniversary year, is awarded to the European Tour member judged to have produced the outstanding performance each calendar month throughout the season.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard, who receives an engraved alms dish and a Jeroboam of Mo\u00ebt & Chandon champagne, re-wrote golf\u2019s history book with his spectacular defence of the Hong Kong Open \u2013 securing his fourth triumph in the tournament, following previous wins in 2005 and 2008, at the age of 49 years and 337 days which extended his own record as the oldest winner on The European Tour.<\/p>\n
Jim\u00e9nez, whose 20th European Tour win was his 13th since turning 40, said: \u201cI\u2019m very happy and grateful to have been voted Golfer of the Month. To do it in the way I did, with that big putt at the 18th (in a play-off) was very special.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very nice to now be 50 and still competing at this level, winning tournaments and it was even better to do it in Hong Kong, a place that I like very much and always enjoy going.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Victory for Jim\u00e9nez followed a play-off at Hong Kong Golf Club, Fanling, with Stuart Manley, of Wales, and Thailand\u2019s Prom Meesawat \u2013 a superb 18-foot birdie putt at the first extra hole coming on a day when Denmark\u2019s Thomas Bj\u00f6rn captured the Nedbank Golf Challenge at the age of 42.<\/p>\n Derek Lawrenson, Golf Correspondent of the Daily Mail and Chairman of the Association of Golf Writers, said: \u201cThe first Sunday in December proved a special one for European Tour stalwarts Thomas Bj\u00f6rn and Miguel Angel Jim\u00e9nez with their victories in South Africa and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n \u201cBj\u00f6rn\u2019s victory in the Nedbank Challenge propelled him to the cusp of a return to Europe\u2019s Ryder Cup team, but it\u2019s hard to argue with the sheer romance of Jim\u00e9nez\u2019s successful defence of the Hong Kong Open. He continues to confound all golfing logic in the most spectacular manner; America\u2019s Golf Channel summed him up aptly when they called him the \u2018world\u2019s most interesting golfer\u2019.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The European Tour Golfer of the Month Panel, comprising members of the AGW as well as commentators from television and radio, focus their attention on winning performances in The Race to Dubai on The European Tour International Schedule \u2013 Denmark\u2019s Morten \u00d8rum Madsen (South African Open Championship hosted by the City of Ekurhuleni) and South Africans Charl Schwartzel (Alfred Dunhill Championship) and Dawie Van der Walt (Nelson Mandela Championship presented by ISPS Handa) were other contenders \u2013 while also taking into account performances worldwide.<\/p>\n Jim\u00e9nez (December) will now be considered with the next 11 monthly winners for The 2014 European Tour Golfer of the Year Award which was won last year by Sweden\u2019s Henrik Stenson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Miguel Angel Jim\u00e9nez has been named the first winner of The European Tour Race to Dubai Golfer of the Month for the 2014 season following his record-breaking start in December. The Golfer of the Month Award, now in its 30th anniversary year, is awarded to the European Tour member judged to have produced the outstanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}