He may have been a member of the European Tour for less than a month, but Ireland’s Shane Lowry has already won a Golfer of the Month award.
The 22-year-old amateur winner of the Irish Open, now a professional, was today named as the winner of the May prize on the circuit ahead of a list of candidates which included Swede Henrik Stenson for his Players Championship victory in Florida and Paul Casey for his third win of the year at the BMW PGA Championship.
Lowry became only the third amateur ever to capture a Tour title and in the second round at Baltray, Co Louth, fired a 62 which matched the lowest round by an amateur in the circuit's history.
Lowry will be looking to bounce back from missing the cut in his first two professional tournaments at Monday's 36-hole Open Championship qualifying event at Sunningdale.
A total of 96 players will be battling for 10 places at Turnberry next month.
The highest-ranked player in the field is Sweden's Johan Edfors, who hopes to repeat his success in the recent US Open qualifier at Walton Heath, while there are two former Open runners-up taking part.
Dane Thomas Bjorn finished joint second to Tiger Woods at St Andrews in 2000 and three years later at Sandwich led by three with four to play, but dropped four shots and lost by one to Ben Curtis.
Thomas Levet was involved in the four-man play-off at Muirfield in 2002 and went to a fifth extra hole before being beaten by Ernie Els.
