Australia’s Steph Kyriacou has won the prestigious Rookie of the Year award on the Ladies European Tour.
Kyriacou, 20, who is at home in Sydney quarantining in a hotel after her sojourn to Europe and most recently Saudi Arabia, won the award comfortably although by not playing the Spanish Open over the weekend, left open the chance that she would be overhauled.
Her nearest competitors, England’s Alice Hewson and Argentina’s Magdalina Simmermacher, both failed to secure the victory that they would have needed to change the result.
Kyriacou, who hails from St Michael’s Golf Club, was one of Australia’s top amateurs and exploded onto the professional scene when she won the Bonville Ladies Classic on the LET in February while still an amateur. That win gave her playing rights in Europe but, interestingly, the points did not count towards Rookie of the Year honours because she was not an LET member at the time of winning the tournament.
She turned professional, set off with her father Nick as caddie and promptly logged five top-10 finishes in nine tournaments in various parts of the world. Her last round was a stunning 63 to finish second in the Saudi Ladies International.
Kyriacou also ranked third on the tour’s Race to Costa del Sol points race behind the dominant Dane Emily Kristine Pedersen and Sweden’s Julia Engstrom across the season.
“It’s been a pretty good year for me, considering, with COVID the way it worked out,” she told Inside The Ropes, Golf Australia’s podcast, last week. “At the beginning of the year I was still an amateur waiting to go to Q-school in August. So that all flipped around.”
