A look at the 20 top players in the world of Golf today: Luke Donald
Luke Campbell Donald is an English professional golfer who was born on 7th December 1977 at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Although considered an Englishman, Luke calls himself half Scottish because his father was from Stranraer in southwest
Scotland.
Luke is married to a Chicago native Diane Antonopoulos they met while attending Northwestern University together. In 2006 they got engaged, and later married on June 24, 2007 in Diane's family's native country of Greece. They currently have one child, a
daughter (Elle Georgina) she was born in 2010
Luke from an early age had an interest in golf, he along with his brother Christian, used to play junior golf at Hazlemere and Beaconsfield Golf Clubs. Luke was the club champion of Beaconsfield twice, winning the championship first at age 15.
When Luke came to US to pursue his golfing career, he joined College Prospects of America, a type of resource service. Martin Laird a fellow golfer also employed their services; they created a resume for Luke and sent it to all the major colleges and universities
in the United States. Luke got responses from several coaches including Wally Goodwin at Stanford University. Luke got recruited by Goodwin to join his squad but did not receive admittance to the university.
Luke turned professional at the age of 23 in the year 2001. During his first season Luke notched up more than $1 million becoming only the 11th rookie in PGA Tour history to do it. Luke has amassed career earnings on the PGA Tour of over $17,000,000,
as well as over €7,000,000 on the European Tour
The year 2004 saw Luke take the Omega Europe Masters and the Scandinavian Masters on the European Tour following the wins up with European Ryder Cup team victory. He later in the year partnered up with Paul Casey to take the WGC-World Cup for England.
He moved in the TOP 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) in early 2005, and his win in the 2006 Honda Classis pushed him into the Top 10.
Luke’s Biggest win to date came in February 2011 at the WGC-Accenture match Play Championship when he defeated world #1 Martin Kaymer 3&2 in the final, it was the first World Golf Championship title for him.
Later that year in May 2011 Luke continued his excellent form by beating Lee Westwood who had entered the tournament as World number 1, in a playoff to win the prestigious flagship event The BMW PGA Championship. The victory was Luke’s fifth on the European
Tour which gave him the highest accolade in golf of becoming the World #1. Westwood had entered the tournament as World #1
Barclays Scottish Open was Luke’s first win as World #1, and the way the year 2011 has panned out for him it seems that he is definitely focused to keep his winning ways and add more titles and majors to his tally to hold on to his number one spot.
Aside from golf, Luke is a quiet and reserved personality, avoiding media whenever possible. Golf although is not his only forte, he is an established painter where he studied his craft at Northwestern University. Donald has been praised for his efforts
with the brush, but that’s not all he also created a line of wines called Luke Donald Collection a brand that is slowly gaining popularity around the globe.
There couldn’t be a more fitting player to carry the flag for world golf than Luke Donald. He is a role model for the sport and a top notch professional that we can root for week in and week out.
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