Ten Moments in golf decade(ii)

6) Lee Westwood' s enormous delight and tears of joy after his memorable victory at the inaugural Dubai World Championship won't be easy to forget. He would have been more than happy to have scooped up the biggest jackpot in European Tour history, his pickings of £744,180 for the victory and his £893,016 from the bonus pool for winning the Race to Dubai giving him a take-away pay packet of more than £1.million. But what really put him over the moon and caused the normally placid Englishman to get wet-eyed was the manner in which he triumphed. In winning by a massive six strokes from a world-class field the man played magnificently memorable golf and never more so than when under pressure on the final day. After a horrible slump a few years back, he has proved he is ready to take on the best in the majors next year. "I'm a bit speechless really," he said afterwards. I think that's about as good as I've ever played under this pressure. It's definitely the biggest moment of my golfing life to date". Hear-hear Lee. But there's more to come.

Ten Amazing Moments of Decade in Golf (I)


5) Something else I won't forget easily was the news of the first-ever professional golfer in the United States being banished from the game for using prohibited drugs. This because the whole sorry business didn't make very much sense. To start with the guy was taking the drugs on doctor's orders - one for a heart condition, the other to stabilize his testosterone. Secondly he wasn't even a member of any Tour at the time and had played in just two tournaments this season by invitation. Banning him then was pretty meaningless and, to me, the action smacked of the US PGA Tour trying to make a point while simultaneously limiting the damage that would have resulted had one of their big name stars been caught with drugs in his system. The fact that they knew, even before they tested him, that their banned man was taking the drugs because he had asked, albeit unsuccessfully, for permission to do so, didn't make the PGA's case any more credible.

Test—Your Flirting Index

4) Still in South Africa, my memories of Pablo Martin's enormous luck at the vicious 18th hole at the Leopard Creek Golf Club's bushveld golf course near the Kruger National Park will also live long. Playing in the third round of the Alfred Dunhill Championship where he was to shrug away a disastrous 2009 season with a one shot victory over local hero Charl Schwartzel, the young Spaniard overflew the narrow island green at the 18th hole, surely one of the cruelest in golf. All week a ton of his rivals had done the same thing with punishing results. Not so Pablo, though. His shot found the narrow bridge linking the green to the mainland, rolled over it, hit some rocks, but finished high and dry and gave him the chance to make a critical chip for par. That was on Saturday. In Sunday's edge-of-the-seat thriller of a final round, his approach to the same green stopped just an inch or two short of an incline that would have sent his ball and the title to the same watery grave that robbed Ernie Els of the Dunhill crown two years ago. Instead Martin was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief and make his winning par from the fringe.