Major winner Sergio García will return to the Andalucía Valderrama Masters hosted by the Sergio García Foundation to defend his title, as the tournament is once again held at Real Club Valderrama.

The 2017 Masters Tournament Champion rounded off a special year at his favourite course as he lifted the trophy in his first tournament on home soil following his triumph at Augusta National, and the victory was event sweeter as it came in an event supported by his own charitable foundation.

This year’s tournament on October 18-21 will once again be sponsored by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia with the support of the Sergio García Foundation. The Spaniard set up his charitable foundation in 2002 for the purpose of contributing to the social inclusion of economically-deprived children through social assistance benefits and the practice of sport as free-time activity.

García delighted Spanish fans with an emotional victory in Sotogrande last year, as he sealed his third win of the season to add to his maiden Major title at Augusta National as well as the Omega Dubai Desert Classic trophy.

The home hero continued his love affair with the venue - where he became the first Spaniard to win a European Tour stroke play event in 2011 - as he lifted the trophy at the end of a week in which he was awarded Honorary Life Membership of both the European Tour and Real Club Valderrama.

The Sergio García Foundation donated all the funds raised at the 2017 Andalucía Valderrama Masters to Madrid’s Hospital Universitario La Paz to help support a makeover of the children's x-ray unit. The money will be spent redesigning the unit into a welcoming, bright and relaxing environment for the children who receive treatment there.

García said: “It was an amazing experience to be able to win in Spain, and in my first tournament back in Spain as the Masters Champion. To win at my favourite golf course, Valderrama, and at our own event that we do with our Foundation, it was the perfect mix. I’m really excited to go back there this year.

“The tournament is really important and it brings a lot to our Foundation so that we can help out as many people as we can. Last year we helped with building a new x-ray room in a hospital in Madrid. It’s really important to us to and we’re excited to hopefully raise as much as possible and help out again.”

It is 21 years since Garcia’s countryman and hero Seve Ballesteros captained Europe to a 14 ½ - 13 ½ win over the USA at Real Club Valderrama, and as the biennial tournament returns to Continental Europe for the first time since that memorable victory in 1997, the eight-time Ryder Cup star is excited about the prospect of bringing more glory to his favourite golf course.

He said: “There are a lot of great tournaments coming up ahead of our tournament in Valderrama, so I’m very excited to hopefully play well going in to it.

“There are a lot of Majors to come and obviously The Ryder Cup. It would be nice to get our hands on it again and bring it back to Valderrama where Seve was the Ryder Cup captain.”

Early bird tickets for the 2018 Andalucía Valderrama Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation are just €8 for the Pro-Am on Wednesday October 17, €12 on Thursday and Friday of the tournament and €20 on Saturday and Sunday. Children aged under 14 are admitted to the event free of charge when accompanied by a ticket holding adult. Tickets are available now HERE

John Rahm secured the 182nd European Tour win by a player from Spain at the Open de España last week, and with just 182 days until the second European Tour event of the year on Spanish soil gets under way, early bird tickets for the Andalucía Valderrama Masters are on sale now at europeantour.com/tickets.

Home fans gathered in their thousands in Madrid on Sunday to see Rahm become the second successive Spanish player to win a European Tour event on home soil, after Sergio Garcia capped off a stunning year with victory at the 2017 Andalucía Valderrama Masters. Now all eyes turn once again to the famous Real Club Valderrama, which will host the event on October 18-21, 2018.

Garcia delighted Spanish fans with an emotional victory in Sotogrande last year, as he sealed his third win of the season to add to his maiden Major title at the Masters Tournament as well as the Omega Dubai Desert Classic trophy.

The home hero continued his love affair with the venue - where he became the first Spaniard to win a European Tour stroke play event in 2011 - as he lifted the trophy at the end of a week in which he was awarded Honorary Life Membership of both the European Tour and Real Club Valderrama.

“Winning in Valderrama was very special. It’s difficult to describe what it meant to win at home, at one of my favourite golf courses and in front of my family and the Spanish fans,” said Garcia, speaking after his victory in 2017.

“It was a great week, I was happy with my game and particularly with my attitude. I kept patient and made sure that the bad shots didn’t affect me too much. To win in Valderrama you have to be very patient, you have to love the place. And I love Valderrama.

“The spectators were unbelievable all week, many came out and enjoyed it not only because I won, but because they saw some great golf thanks to Joost’s Luiten and all the players.

“2017 was an amazing year both for me and for Spanish golf. As for me, it was probably the best year in my career.”

Early bird tickets for the 2018 Andalucía Valderrama Masters are just €8 for the Pro-Am on Wednesday October 17, €12 on Thursday and Friday of the tournament and €20 on Saturday and Sunday. Children aged under 14 are admitted to event free of charge when accompanied by a ticket holding adult. Tickets are available now at europeantour.com/tickets

Masters Champion wins the prestigious award for the first time.

He is the second Spaniard to receive the honour after three-time winner Seve Ballesteros.

Garcia won three times in total in 2017 – the most victories by any player.

Spain’s Sergio Garcia, the reigning Masters Champion, has been named the Hilton European Tour Golfer of the Year for 2017, receiving the prestigious annual award for the first time.

Garcia enjoyed a phenomenal 12 months on the global stage, winning three times on the European Tour, including an emotional first Major Championship at Augusta National in April. The 37 year old defeated his Ryder Cup team-mate Justin Rose in a play-off to become the third Spaniard to claim the famous Green Jacket, following in the footsteps of his compatriots Seve Ballesteros and José María Olazábal.

Fittingly, Garcia’s triumph came on the day the legendary Ballesteros would have turned 60, and in recognition of his achievements throughout 2017, a panel consisting of members of the golfing media voted him as winner of the Hilton European Tour Golfer of the Year award for 2017, an award Ballesteros won on three occasions – in 1986, 1988 and 1991.

“This is an amazing honour,” said Garcia, whose year of celebration also included marrying his fiancée Angela Akins in July. “I think both on and off the golf course it has been a unique and unbelievable year, and one that I will definitely remember my whole life.

“I am so happy to receive this award, and to be named the Hilton European Tour Golfer of the Year, against the calibre of players that were in contention is incredible. Tommy, Justin, Tyrrell and Jon are all amazing players, and all had unbelievable years themselves.

“With the five of us filling the top five places in the Race to Dubai, it shows the real strength of the European Tour, and European players in particular, and hopefully we will keep that going for next September in Paris.”

Garcia’s 2017 European Tour campaign got off to the perfect start with a wire-to-wire victory in the Omega Dubai Desert Classic in February – his first European Tour title in three seasons. He finished three shots clear of the 2016 Open Champion and Race to Dubai Number One Henrik Stenson, succeeding Englishman Danny Willett as champion at the Emirates Club.

Remarkably, two months later Willett presented Garcia with the Green Jacket, as the Spaniard became the 26th European Tour member to win a Major Championship, fulfilling the raw potential he showed when finishing runner-up in the US PGA Championship in 1999, the year he won the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year award.

In total, it took him 74 attempts to eventually claim the Major Championship his talent so richly deserved, having previously recorded 22 top ten finishes, but it was certainly worth the wait, as he prevailed in an unforgettable battle with Englishman Rose at Augusta National.

The pair shared the lead after the third round and produced a final day which will go down in Masters folklore, trading blow after blow for 18 holes as they carded matching closing rounds of 69.

Having endured his share of heartache across the years, it was finally Garcia’s time, as Rose found the pine straw on the first extra hole and then missed his par effort, before the Spaniard rolled in a 12-foot birdie putt for an emotional victory.

It was Garcia’s 13th European Tour title, but that number was far from unlucky, as he completed an outstanding season when he went on to lift his third title of 2017 on home soil in October with victory in the Andalucia Valderrama Masters, an event hosted by his own Foundation.

Garcia was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the European Tour, as well as of Real Club Valderrama, during the tournament week and ended it with the trophy, as he continued his love affair with one of Europe’s top golf courses – by claiming a one stroke victory over Dutchman Joost Luiten after another epic final round duel.

Shrugging off the pressure of hosting his own event and playing on home soil for the first time since his Major breakthrough, Garcia was methodical in all aspects of his game, closing with a final round 67 for a 12 under par total of 272 and his sixth European Tour win in total on Spanish soil.

He finished the year in fourth position in the Race to Dubai Rankings presented by Rolex, with a runner-up finish in the BMW International Open in June and a tie for fourth in the season-ending DP World Tour Championship, Dubai also contributing to his superb individual season.

Keith Pelley, Chief Executive of The European Tour, said: “Sergio is a wonderful ambassador for our game and an incredible talent, so it was no surprise his victory in the Masters Tournament proved so popular with golf fans around the world.

“That alone was a remarkable achievement, but to also win two other prestigious titles in 2017, including his home tournament at Valderrama, makes it a simply sensational season, and he is a thoroughly deserving winner of the Hilton European Tour Golfer of the Year award.”

Panel member Iain Carter, BBC golf correspondent and Chairman of the Association of Golf Writers, said: “There were brilliant performances throughout the year from European Tour players - most notably from Race to Dubai winner Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose who pushed him so close in such a dramatic end to the season.

“However, Sergio Garcia had the season of his life, which is saying a lot given the glittering nature of his long career. No other player in consideration matched his tally of three wins and, of course, one of those was the Masters. It was a hugely popular triumph.

“Quite simply, all of his rivals would have swapped their results for his in 2017 if they were given the choice. For this reason, the Spaniard is a thoroughly deserving winner of the award, despite the substantial merits of the other leading contenders.”

The Madrid hospital will allocate the donation of 123,116.39 euros to a project to humanise the X-ray unit in the children's area.

The Sergio García Foundation has donated all the funds raised at the Andalucía Valderrama Masters to Madrid’s Hospital Universitario La Paz to support an interior design project aiming to humanise the X-ray unit in the children's area.

Antonio García, Sergio’s uncle and responsible for the Foundation, presented the cheque to doctors Javier Cobas, Children and Maternal Hospital Deputy Manager; Rafael Pérez-Santamarina, Hospital Manager; María Pilar Moreno Anaya, Central Services Deputy Director; Gonzalo Garzón, Head of Radiology; Esther Rey, Nursing Director; and Eduardo López Collazo, Director of the Research Institute.

The unit will be redesigned into a welcoming, bright and relaxing environment through the choice of appropriate materials, colours and images. In addition to caring for individuals, the project is environmentally friendly, as the improved lighting system will result in a 60 percent saving in power consumption.

“We are all very excited with this project, which is an area of real need. We have invested in equipment recently, but we lack infrastructure, and children must also be separated from adults,”, explained Dr. Cobas.

“The renovation will take about three months since we cannot stop our activity. Our children’s hospital, considered as number one in Europe, is well equipped with 240 beds and receives 9,000 patients per year, as the only hospital that can provide all medical and surgical specialties, allowing all types of pediatric transplants to be performed.”

For Sergio García, “Winning the Andalucía Valderrama Masters was an incredible feeling, I’m still over the moon. It was a great event for many reasons: Valderrama is one of my favourite courses, I played really well and felt confident, kept patient and waited for my chances; Joost (Luiten) played unbelievable and did not make it easy for me, and the support from the spectators was awesome.

“When I was presented with the project of humanising the X-ray unit, I really liked the idea. I am very happy because we have contributed to make a dream come true for the patients and their families, through the event and my Foundation”.

The third edition of the Andalucía Valderrama Masters took place from October 19-22 as Garcia secured his third win in a season where he achieved a career ambition by sealing his maiden Major title at the Masters Tournament.

García set up his charitable foundation in 2002 for the purpose of contributing to the social inclusion of economically-deprived children through social assistance benefits and the practice of sport as free-time activity. The Foundation supports, on a regular or an occasional basis, a large variety of NGOs and humanitarian associations.

Through his foundation, Sergio has been one of the key drivers of Spanish adaptive golf. Together with the Deporte y Desafío Foundation, they conducted 23 adaptive golf clinics throughout Spain attended by more than 700 disabled persons.

The Andalucía Valderrama Masters was sponsored by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia with the support of Rolex, Volvo, Solán de Cabras, Heineken and Osborne.

Video Sergio García Foundation