Lucky Jim - Furyk scores US Player of the Year award
The $10million Jim Furyk trousered for winning the FedEx Cup was always going to be difficult to top. But arguably, Furyk claimed an even more personally rewarding award yesterday when he was named PGA Player of the Year.
Claiming the accolade for the first time in a career that's spanned 16 years since his first win on the PGA Tour, the 40-year-old admitted: "It's a special moment, and a special year."
Though Furyk has been one of the tour's more consistent performers over the last decade and a half, the 2003 US Open winner started the 2010 season with his game seemingly in decline, his last victory coming in 2007 when he won the Canadian Open.
But Furyk went on to confound the critics who'd written him off, winning three times on tour this year, including the season finale Tour Championship to guarantee the Fed Ex Cup win - even though Furyk had been forced to miss the first round of the play-offs.
On the eve of the Barclays, the Pennsylvania-born player overslept, thus missing a pre-tournament pro-am event - and so being disqualified from the main event. Fortunately, by that stage Furyk had already amassed enough points over the rest of the season to qualify for the second round.
Furyk also finished second on the PGA Tour money list, with Matt Kuchar bagging first place. Though Kuchar only won once this year, at the Barclays, for just his third PGA Tour victory, the 32-year-old demonstrated formidable consistency throughout the season, claiming 11 top 10 finishes from 26 events.
That gave Kuchar top place on the money list with $4,910,477, and the Florida-born player also won the Harry Vardon and Byron Nelson trophies, awarded to the player with the lowest adjusted scoring average for the season - Kuchar had an adjusted scoring average of 69.61.
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