What Is the Harry Vardon Trophy? The European Number One Award Explained

The Harry Vardon Trophy goes to the European Tour’s leading player of the season. Since 2009 it has gone to the winner of the Race to Dubai, the DP World Tour’s season-long ranking.

Rory McIlroy lifted it for an eighth time on Sunday. It was his fifth in a row and drew him level with Colin Montgomerie’s record.

How is it won today?

DP World Tour members earn Race to Dubai Ranking Points at every counting event, and the player with the most points at the end of the season wins. The schedule has at least 42 tournaments in at least 25 countries. It finishes with the DP World Tour Play-Offs. The top 70 play the Abu Dhabi Championship, and the top 50 available players go on to the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.

Those two Rolex Series events carry 21,000 points between them, more than four Back 9 events combined. That weighting can make the finish very tight.

How has the award changed since 1937?

The British PGA created the Harry Vardon Memorial Trophy in 1937, the year Vardon died. At first it went to the player with the best stroke average across seven major stroke play events. Charles Whitcombe won it with an average of 71.62 over 24 rounds. In 1939 it switched to a points system based on finishing positions, and Reg Whitcombe won with 27 points. After the Second World War it went back to stroke average, and Bobby Locke won the first post-war award in 1946.

Under those methods, the winner was not always the biggest earner. In 1971 Peter Oosterhuis won the Order of Merit with £9,269 in prize money. Gary Player earned £11,281 that year, but £8,500 of it came from a single event, the Piccadilly World Match Play Championship.

The Order of Merit was later decided by prize money, and it ran in that form until 2008. The Race to Dubai replaced it in 2009. In 2021 the ranking was renamed the DP World Tour Rankings, and it reverted to the Race to Dubai from the 2023 season.

Who was Harry Vardon?

Vardon came from Jersey. He won the Open Championship a record six times, in 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911 and 1914, and won the US Open in 1900.

Who has won it most?

Montgomerie and McIlroy share the record with eight titles each. Montgomerie won seven of his in a row, from 1993 to 1999, and added an eighth in 2005. McIlroy won in 2012, 2014 and 2015, and has won every year since 2022. Seve Ballesteros is next with six.

Is it the same as the career money list?

No. The Race to Dubai starts again from zero every season and crowns one player each year. The DP World Tour Career Money List keeps adding a player’s qualifying prize money over his whole career, and since 2016 it has excluded Race to Dubai bonus pool payments.

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Related: FedExCup – Past Winners

From 2007 to the present day.

What does the Race to Dubai winner receive?

The Harry Vardon Trophy and the title of DP World Tour Number One, still widely known as European Number One.

Colin Montgomerie leads the all-time Order of Merit winners with eight victories, seven of them consecutive.

How does it work?

It is a points-based ranking for DP World Tour members that runs across the entire season. Players earn Race to Dubai Ranking Points at every counting event, and whoever has the most at the end of the season is crowned the tour’s Number One.

The schedule features a minimum of 42 tournaments in a minimum of 25 countries. The DP World Tour says the total prize fund of US$157.5 million outside the Major Championships is a record.

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