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Open champion Padraig Harrington has been named as the European Tour’s 2007 Golfer of the Year . Harrington finished the year in third place in the Order of Merit behind Justin Rose and Ernie Els and defeated Sergio Garcia in a playoff at Carnoustie to win his first major at the British Open Championship. No Irishman had lifted the Claret Jug since Fred Daly in 1947 and Harrington was the first from the Republic.

Despite wining the Order of Merit, last year Harrington lost out to Ryder Cup team mate Paul Casey.  This year however he has won the vote of a panel of writers and commentators ahead of US Open champion Angel Cabrera and new European number one Justin Rose.

Looking forward to the challenges of  the 2008 European Tour, including  the Ryder Cup, Harrington Said, “It is an award I will treasure.”

Meanwhile Tiger Woods picked up the US Tour’s corresponding award, the Byron Nelson Trophy, for the third straight season and the ninth time in the last 11 years.  Woods was the leading money winner in America for the eighth time and won seven titles in 2007, including the USPGA for his 13th major title.

Woods ended the year with a 2007 stroke average of 67.79 — a stroke and a half a round better than No. 2 Ernie Els.  Now that Woods is entering the prime of his golf playing career, even Even Jack Nicklaus has conceded that, providing Woods stays healthy, his record of 18 professional major championships, once considered unbreakable, will fall, probably soon.

Woods has now ended speculation by announcing that he will not take part in the European Tour’s lucrative new end-of-season tournament. The Dubai World Championship is open to the top 60 golfers on the European Order of Merit but the American says he is too busy to take part. Tiger admitted that he could not justify playing enough tournaments to ensure he retained membership of the European Tour.

Woods is back in action this week after the longest lay-off in his career, when he plays in the Target World Challenge at Thousand Oaks in California, the 16-player event he hosts each December to raise money for charities.  The sixteen competitors in the field include best eleven players from the Official World Golf Rankings, along with four special invitees selected by the Tiger Woods Foundation.

Tiger has won two of the past three tournaments (2004, 2006) and this year could become the first back-to-back champion in this exciting warm-up for the 2008 season.

adjective:aspiring u'spIring - desiring or striving for recognition or advancement