Who is Canada's Professional Golfer of the Year?

Who is Canada’s Professional Golfer of the Year?
It seems that 2011 was a changing of the guard year for Canadians in Professional Golf, both on the PGA Tour and other Professional Tours around the World. There were a number of highlights this year in Men’s Professional Golf and for the first time in a long time none of them include the names Mike Weir or Stephan Ames. Instead they included names like Adam Hadwin, David Hearn and Rod Spittle. Thinking about this question we decided to create a poll on CK Golf Solutions Facebook page .

The Choices
Based only on personal thoughts, we decided the poll would have only three choices; Adam Hadwin, David Hearn and Rod Spittle. We were surprised that 77 people participated in the voting. There were also a few write in votes for Jim Rutledge (2), Dave Levesque (from our Quebec friend) and Other (2). Here are the player bios from 2011.

David Hearn
Hearn finishes the year as the number two ranked Canadian and 251st player overall in the 2011 Official World Golf Ranking. The 32 year old spent the year playing on the PGA Tour making 26 starts with 19 cuts made. He had three top 10’s and six top 25’s on the year with a tie for 5th at the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children as his best finish. He earned $896,072 in the year, good enough for 121st place and a secure PGA Tour card for 2012.

Rod Spittle
Spittle does not appear on the 2011 Official Golf Ranking. The 56 year old spent the year playing the Champions Tour making 24 starts and 23 cuts (a bit miss-leading as the Champions Tour does not have a cut except at their majors). He had four top 10’s and 12 top 25 finishes with a tie for second at the Allianz Championship as his best finish. He earned $731,144 on the year, good enough for 22nd place and a secure Champions Tour card for 2012.

Adam Hadwin
Hadwin finishes the year as the number one ranked Canadian and 234th player overall in the 2011 Official World Golf Ranking. The 24 year old had a good year considering he had no official status on the PGA Tour this year. He had one victory on the Canadian Tour and three top 10’s. He played in only four PGA Tour events, making all 4 cuts with two top 10’s and earned $432,751. That placed him inside the top 150 earning him a spot in the final stage of PGA Tour School next month. Along the way he represented Canada (with Roger Sloan) at the World Cup of Golf and defended his title winning the Vancouver Open Championship.

The Results for Canada’s Professional Golf of the Year poll by CK Golf Solutions…
77 votes cast:
David Hearn – 4 votes (5%)
Rod Spittle – 6 votes (8%)
Adam Hadwin – 62 votes (81%)
Other – 5 votes (6%)

So it appears our Golf community thinks Adam Hadwin is Canada’s Professional Golfer of the Year. He’s certainly deserving of it!

It should be noted that not all the votes, but the majority, were cast from British Columbia.