Aug 10
24
Arjun Atwal became the first Indian and just the sixth Asian-born player to win on the PGA Tour when he secured a one-stroke victory at the Wyndham Championship on Sunday.
Atwal joined Japanese trio Isao Aoki, Shigeki Maruyama and Ryuji Imada and South Koreans K.J. Choi and Y.E. Yang in an elite but growing club of champions from world’s most populous continent.
Price reward for his victory $918,000
Early life
Born in a Sikh family of Asansol, West Bengal, India, Atwal took up golf at the age of fourteen, playing at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. He also spent two years at school in the United States, attending W. Tresper Clarke High School, in Westbury, New York. Atwal has been backed through his career by his golf-fanatic father, Bindi, a businessman, an avid golfer and his biggest fan and critic.
Career
After turning professional in 1995 he became one of the leading players on the Asian Tour, topping the order of merit in 2003 and becoming the first man to win a million U.S. dollars on the tour by winning the Hero Honda Masters on home soil in the same year.
Atwal was the second Indian golfer to earn membership of the European Tour after Jeev Milkha Singh and the first to win on a European Tour event when he notched up a five stroke victory in the 2002 Caltex Singapore Masters, which was co-sanctioned by the Asian and European Tours. A second European Tour win followed at the Carlsberg Malaysian Open in 2003. Late in the same year Atwal finished seventh at the PGA Tour’s qualifying school in the U.S., earning a PGA Tour card for 2004, making him the first native East Indian golfer to do so. In his 2004 rookie season on the PGA Tour, he finished 142nd on the money list.
Atwal finished 82nd on the money list in 2005 to secure his spot on Tour for 2006.
His dream cam true in 2010.
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