Professional Career
Singh turned professional in 1993 and his first professional win came in the same year at the 1993 Southern Oklahoma State Open, a minor local event, but he played mainly in Asia, where he was a regular winner in the mid-1990s. In 1997 he finished seventh at the European Tour qualifying school, and he joined the tour the following year.
His best season in Europe up until 2006 was in 1999, when he came 50th on the Order of Merit. He struggled with injury in the early years of the new century but in April 2006 he won the Volvo China Open, becoming the second Indian player to win on the European Tour after Arjun Atwal. He also won the season ending Volvo Masters, which elevated him to a final position of 16th on the Order of Merit. He finished 2006 as the winner of the Asian Tour Order of Merit and capped his season with a pair of back to back wins in Japan to become the first Indian to make the top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings. In 2007 he became the first Indian golfer to participate in the Masters Tournament. In August 2008, Singh achieved the highest ranking for an Indian in any major event at the 2008 PGA Championship in Oakland Hills, finishing at T9, making him arguably India's best golfer ever.
Singh finished the 2008 European Tour season ranked 12th on the Order of Merit, and after winning the Barclays Singapore Open won his second Order of Merit title on the Asian Tour.
In 2009, Singh finished the WGC-CA Championship in fourth place, after leading round one.
Singh played on the Nationwide Tour in 2003. He played on the PGA Tour from 2007 to 2010, where his best finish was 4th place at the 2009 WGC-CA Championship.
Singh received India's fourth highest civil honour the Padma Shri in 2007.
On July 15, 2012, Singh beat Francesco Molinari in a sudden death playoff to win the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open, the week before the 2012 Open Championship. The win secured Singh a spot in the 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club as a result of finishing as the highest non-qualifier at the event. The win was also Singh's fourth career victory on the European Tour and moved him ahead of Arjun Atwal, making him the most successful Indian golfer in European Tour history.
Read more about this topic: Jeev Milkha Singh
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“We have been weakened in our resistance to the professional anti-Communists because we know in our hearts that our so-called democracy has excluded millions of citizens from a normal life and the normal American privileges of health, housing and education.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)