REBECCA HUDSON WINS THE
2000 WOMAN GOLFER AWARDS

Rebecca Hudson, the reigning British Match and stroke Play champion, has won the 2000 Daily Telegraph Golfer of the Year award.  The 21-year-old Yorkshire golfer will receive her trophy at a luncheon in London on December 13.

Hudson, a member of Wheatley, has had an outstanding 2000 season.  She won the Spanish Ladies’ Open in March and followed up that early season success by defeating Emma Duggelby at the second extra hole in the Scottish Open Stroke Play championship at Royal Troon.   She then lost to Duggelby in the final of the English championship at Hunstanton before defeating her in the final of the British at Walton Heath.  Reverting to stroke-play, she won the English Stroke Play at Silloth and the British at Royal County Down where she was the only player to finish under par.  In keeping with all of this, she was the only unbeaten player afield when England won the 2000 Home Internationals.

Though many with her credentials would be tempted to turn professional sooner rather than later, Hudson expects to remain in the amateur game until after the 2002 Curtis Cup.  “When I turn professional,” she explains, “I want to be at a level where I’m good enough to compete with the better players.”

Hudson has been collecting Daily Telegraph titles since 1994 when she won The Daily Telegraph/Center Parcs Junior Golf championship in San Lorenzo.  She repeated that success in 1995 and 1997 when the event switched to Sea Island, Georgia.

In 1995 and 1997, she also won The Daily Telegraph’s Joyce Wethered trophy, an award which commemorates the greatest woman amateur of all time and is given annually to the girl golfer making the most of her amateur career.  This year, the Wethered trophy will be handed to 16-year-old Sophie Walker.  The Lincolnshire teenager won the English Girls’championship, the Midland championship and The Daily Telegraph Junior championship in Sea Island.