Vijay Singh, who this week defends his Masters title at Augusta National has entered the Volvo PGA Championship at Wentworth Club from May 25-28. Singh will be attempting to complete a tournament double over the West Course, where he won the 1997 Cisco World Match Play title.
The 38 year old Fijian made the last of his nine appearances in the Volvo PGA Championship in the same year in which he won the Cisco World Match Play event. This year he will be chasing a record first prizeof £333,330 (approx 521,500 euro) from a total prize fund of £2,000,000 (approx 3,130,000).
Singh's best performance in the Volvo PGA Championship came on his second visit in 1989, when he shot rounds of 71-70-71-68 for an eight under par total of 280 and a share of eighth place with Mark James behind champion Nick Faldo.
He played on The European Tour for eight seasons before taking up Membership of the US PGA Tour in 1996. Overall he has amassed £2,950,379 (4,423,531 euro) official European Tour Volvo Order of Merit tournaments and a further £800,480 (1,144,581 euro) in Special Events.
Singh has enjoyed a remarkably successful sequence of late, winning back-to-back on The European Tour and finishing in the top four in his last four starts on the US PGA Tour.
In the space of a fortnight on The European Tour, Singh earned 318,261 euro (£202,327) after winning the Carlsberg Malaysian Open after a play-off against Padraig Harrington with rounds of 68-70-68-68 for a 14 under par total of 274. He then edged out Harrington at the third hole of sudden-death.
A week later he made it two in a row in the Caltex Singapore Masters, finishing two strokes ahead of England's Warren Bennett with rounds of 64-63-68-68 for a 21 under par aggregate of 263.
He then returned to the United States, finishing second in the AT & T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, tied third in the Genuity Championship, tied fourth in the Bay Hill Invitational and second behind Tiger Woods in The Players Championship close to his home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
So far in 2001 he has earned $1,758.495 to lie in third place on the US PGA Official Money List.
