McIlroy is red hot favourite to win the BBC and RTÉ Sports Personality of the Year awards on Thursday and Saturday
09:46, 15 Dec 2025Updated 09:58, 15 Dec 2025
Rory McIlroy holds the trophy after receiving the Green Jacket in April at Augusta(Image: David Cannon/Getty Images)
Masters champion Rory McIlroy has bagged his first big award in what could be a massive week of recognition for the Holywood superstar.
The 36-year-old is red hot favourite to win a first BBC Sports Personality of the Year award on Thursday night and is also expected to be named RTÉ Sports Person of the Year on Saturday night.
On Monday, McIlroy and his lifelong coach Michael Bannon were recognised for their outstanding achievements in the annual Irish Golf Writers’ Association (IGWA) awards.
Members of the IGWA voted McIlroy the 2025 Men’s Professional of the Year after an outstanding season in which he won the Masters Tournament to become the first European and just the sixth man in history to complete the modern career Grand Slam.
The 2025 awards, which are sponsored by Anantara The Marker Dublin, will be presented during a lunch at the five-star hotel in Dublin’s docklands on Tuesday, December 16.
The Down man also won another three tournaments — the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, The Players Championship and the Amgen Irish Open — captured the European Tour’s Race to Dubai for the seventh time and played a major role in Europe’s Ryder Cup victory in New York in September.
McIlroy has never won the BBC prize but was the RTE winner back in 2014 in the season he won both the Open Championship and US PGA.
He is among a shortlist of six contenders for the 2025 BBC gong with England footballers Hannah Hampton and Chloe Kelly, rugby union player Ellie Kildunne, darts player Luke Littler and Formula 1 driver Lando Norris his fellow nominees.
McIlroy is currently 1-2 favourite with Paddy Power to win the prize as the show which will be broadcast live from MediaCityUK in Salford.
Michael Bannon will be recognised by the IGWA for Distinguished Services to Golf for his impeccable trajectory as a PGA professional.
A member of the PGA since 1981, Michael won 20 PGA region events before dedicating himself to teaching.
After starting as an assistant at Ardglass, he moved first to Holywood Golf Club as head professional and has coached Rory McIlroy since he was eight years old.
He moved to Bangor GC in 1999 and McIlroy followed him there, going on to become world number one for the first time in 2012.
Rory McIlroy with his coach Michael Bannon(Image: Getty Images)
He has since helped McIlroy win 45 times as a professional, including five Major championship titles — the US Open (2011), the US PGA (2012 & 2014), The Open Championship (2014) and the Masters Tournament (2025).
Co Kildare’s Lauren Walsh won the Women’s Professional of the Year award for the second season running, edging out Elm Park rookie Anna Foster in the ballot.
The 25-year-old from Castlewarden Golf Club finished a career-high of tenth in the Ladies European Tour’s Order of Merit in just her second season as a professional and went on to win her LPGA Tour card at the recent Q-Series event in Alabama.
County Louth Golf Club’s Stuart Grehan is the 2025 Men’s Amateur of the Year in recognition of a season in which he won the Flogas Irish Men’s Amateur Open Championship and the AIG Irish Men’s Close Championship.
He also helped Britain and Ireland win the St Andrews Trophy at Real Club de la Puerta de Hierro in Madrid and was selected to represent Great Britain and Ireland in September’s Walker Cup matches at Cypress Point.
The 32-year-old Tullamore native won the Irish Amateur Open after a playoff at Seapoint and became just the third player in the modern era, after Padraig Harrington (1995) and Peter O’Keeffe (2021), to do the Open-Close double, winning the Irish Amateur Close title by two strokes at Westport.
Tramore Golf Club’s Anna Dawson was voted Women’s Amateur of the Year, edging out other outstanding performers, including Beth Coulter, Aine Donegan and Emma Fleming.
Having returned from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to compete at home with Maynooth University, the Paddy Harrington Scholarship student won the AIG Irish Women’s Amateur Close Championship at Ardee Golf Club in August and went on to earn her full international call-up at the Home Internationals at Woodhall Spa.
Following the cancellation of the 2024 awards due to Storm Éowyn, last season’s winners – Sara Byrne (2024 Women’s Amateur), Max Kennedy (2024 Men’s Amateur), Tom McKibbin (2024 Men’s Professional) and Eamonn Darcy (2024 Distinguished Services to Golf) – will also be honoured at this year’s awards lunch.
The Irish Golf Writers’ Association (IGWA) was established in 1976 and hosts an annual awards lunch to honour the Men’s and Women’s Professional Player of the Year, the Women’s Amateur Player of the Year, the Men’s Amateur Player of the Year and a person who has been deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to golf in Ireland.
Past winners — https://www.irishgolfwriters.com/igwa-award-winners
