O'Meara, Pak, Irwin Receive Awards
Mark O'Meara, Se Ri Pak and Hale Irwin were landslide winners of the Golf Writers Association of America 1998 Player of the Year Awards. All three players will be honored at the GWAA's Annual Awards Dinner April 7, 1999 in Augusta, Ga.
The GWAA Awards made it a clean sweep of the major Player of the Year honors for both O'Meara and Irwin and gave Pak her first Player of the Year Award. Pak finished second to Annika Sörenstam in the LPGA's points-based Player of the Year standings.
O'Meara is the latest player to remind us skills don't deteriorate after 40. At age 41, O'Meara won both the Masters and Open Championship, finished in the top 10 in seven of 19 PGA Tour events and finished seventh on the '98 money list.
In addition, he won the World Match Play Championship, will be playing on the U.S. President's Cup team and won both PGA Tour and PGA of America Player of the Year honors. David Duval, who won four events, the money title and the Vardon Trophy, finished second in the GWAA voting.
Irwin, 53, continued to raise the standards on the Senior PGA Tour. The three-time U.S. Open champ won seven times -- which gives him 16 wins in the past two years -- but set a single-season earnings mark for both the PGA Tour and Senior PGA Tour with $2,861,945 and set the all-time scoring average on the Senior Tour with 68.59.
Irwin, who also won the GWAA Award in 1997, won two majors -- the PGA Seniors and U.S. Senior Open -- and played at an incredibly high level all season, finishing in the top five in 20 of the 22 events. Gil Morgan, who won six events, was second in the voting.
Pak made the biggest impact of any LPGA rookie since Nancy Lopez. The 21-year-old from Korea won four times, including two majors -- a href="http://www.golfweb.com/ga/lpga/1998/0502/">LPGA Championship and U.S. Women's Open -- and was the LPGA's Rookie of the Year.
She set LPGA scoring records for 18-holes (10-under-par 61) and 72-holes (261) and tied the record for score in relation to par (23-under) in winning the Jamie Farr Classic in July. She finished in the top 10 eight times in 25 Tournaments, was second to Sörenstam on the money list with $872,170 and was awarded the Korean Order of Merit.
Sörenstam, who also won four times, led the money list and won the Vare Trophy with a record scoring average. She was second in the GWAA voting.