The Player of the Year Awards are an annual feature of Australian Golf Digest’s January issue and the performances of our top men’s and women’s players across the globe made the Coach of the Year award one of the most hotly contested.

Winner in three of the past four years, Western Australia’s Ritchie Smith had another outstanding year, guiding Minjee Lee to her breakthrough major championship at the Aumundi Evian Championship, Min Woo Lee to the top 50 in the world rankings and Hannah Green to another strong season on the LPGA Tour.

Khan Pullen’s star pupil Cam Davis earned his first PGA Tour title at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Gary Barter helped Stephanie Kyriacou and Matt Jones to wins on the Ladies European Tour and PGA Tour respectively and Grant Field took Cameron Smith to the top 20 in the world, got Australian Amateur champion Louis Dobbelaar ready to join the professional ranks and helped Andre Stolz to become the dominant force on the SParms PGA Legends Tour.

The likes of Michael Jones, Tim Wood, Gareth Jones and Adrian Wickstein all enjoyed great success in 2021 but the Australian Golf Digest judges deemed Azzopardi’s influence on Herbert as the best performance of the year.

A winner on the European Tour for a second time at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open in July, Herbert finished tied for fourth at the first event of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals to effectively seal his promotion to the PGA Tour.

He missed the cut in each of his first two starts as a full member of the PGA Tour but when Azzopardi answered the call for help and flew to the US to take a closer look at Herbert’s swing the results were instant, Herbert coming from four shots back on Sunday to win the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in Bermuda.

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Immediately following his win Herbert paid tribute to the sacrifice his coach made in flying to the United States to make the adjustments they needed to get back to his best.

“I was taking the club back a long way inside, inside plane going back and from there it was very hard to match it up,” Herbert explained.

“I was kind of leaking the ball to the right or double-crossing left, which is not a really good way to play golf.

“We just worked on that takeaway a lot. It’s a lot to work on because then it throws out a lot of your feels of how the ball’s going to launch. I just felt like I was going to hit a lot of shots left.

“For him to make that commitment to come out and help me out a lot with my golf swing… we hit a lot of balls over the last two or three weeks getting ready for this event.

“To have it pay off so quickly and to share that win with him, that was really special.”

For his efforts Herbert was named Male Player of the Year while first year Associate Lachlan Aylen (Eynesbury Golf Club) received the nod as the PGA Associate Player of the Year.

For the full list of award winners see the January issue of Australian Golf Digest, on sale now.