English golfer Nick Faldo might be best known as the holder of eight major championship titles, but it was a 1996 win at the Volvo Masters in Bermuda that catapulted him to international fame.
Faldo, a five-time major champion, seemed to have lost his mojo in the years before the championship on the British island. After winning the British Open in 1992, his next major was a runner-up finish in the British Open in 1993.
Then came that win at Bermuda, when his name was finally inscribed on the coveted Claret Jug for the first time in his career.
Faldo’s triumph came on the 20th anniversary of the birth of his first child, a daughter named Rosie.
During his years of dominance on the European tour, Faldo had been better known for his philanthropy than for his golf. In 2002, he had spearheaded a major effort to create a junior tennis program in Kenya and set up a center to train children in the sport. A year later, he partnered with Australia’s Jarmain Rimmer to fight blood cancer. The money raised from Faldo’s involvement in a music project in Shanghai with U2 frontman Bono helped raise more than $900,000 for victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
And in 2006, Faldo announced that he was donating his entire annual winner’s purse from the Irish Open to charity.
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