Danny Willett on course to ‘making £10 million’ following Masters triumph

Champion: Danny Willett
Andrew Redington/Getty Images

Masters winner Danny Willett will “easily” earn £10 million over the next few years, experts forecast today, as the player celebrated his stunning victory at the Augusta National course.

Willett, 28, the first British golfer to claim the Major tournament since 1996, tweeted a picture of himself drinking a glass of red wine with the caption: “Cheers everyone.”

Sports marketing consultant Nigel Currie said that the dramatic three- stroke win would catapult Willett to “a completely new level” — trebling his off-course earning power immediately to the £2 million to £3 million-a-year category.

He added: “Bonuses are built into many of the sponsorship contracts and these will now be triggered. But it is as much about profile as anything. He has a great personality and his family story is very nice too with his wife just having had a baby, sponsors like that.”

Willett almost missed the tournament that will change his life because his wife Nicole was due to give birth to their first child yesterday and he had promised to be by her side. But their son, Zachariah James, was born by Caesarean section a week early — allowing Willett to fly to Georgia.

The Sheffield golfer’s parents, retired vicar Reverend Stephen Willett and wife Elisabet, today revealed how they used to argue about keeping their son off school so he could practise his golf.

The Reverend Willett told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Every Wednesday — my wife used to argue with me — I’d take him to a golf club, drop him off, pick him up at 8 o’clock at night and get told off for keeping him off school.” Mrs Willett said her husband used to write “the most appalling” excuses for keeping him away from the classroom.

She said: “He used to say Danny wasn’t in school yesterday but he’s here today, and that used to be it for years and years. But the PE department, the better he got the more they supported him, so the school in the end was fantastic.”

Masters 2016: In pictures

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Mrs Willett said he first took up the sport during holidays in Anglesey, when their father would take Willett and his siblings to play golf. She said: “Gradually Danny got better and better than all the rest of them and we thought maybe there was something there.”

Willett is the first Briton since Sir Nick Faldo to win the Green Jacket at the Augusta National Golf Club.

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