Glenn Gibbins: Graeme McDowell blessed with a winning personality

Since its inaugural recipient back in 1954, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award has frequently gone to nominees whose kinship with personality has equated to the Nazis' affinity with socialism.

Since its inaugural recipient back in 1954, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award has frequently gone to nominees whose kinship with personality has equated to the Nazis' affinity with socialism. Making a mockery of the title of the event has been what could be called a leitmotif through the past 56 years, with the winner and 'personality' too often giving the appearance of an estranged couple.

There has been a bizarre kink in the election process since the beginning. Older enthusiasts will recall and younger students will have learned, for example, that 1954 was the year in which Roger Bannister not only achieved the fabled sub-four-minute mile, but went on to win gold in the European championship 1,500 metres in Berne and in the mile at the then Empire Games in Vancouver, in the latter defeating his great Australian rival, John Landy.

This was good enough to make him the first laureate in the newly-established Sportsman of the Year contest run by the prestigious American magazine, Sports Illustrated. It was not, however, sufficient to satisfy the standards of readers of the Radio Times, who chose Chris Chataway, one of Bannister's pacemakers on the night in Oxford when he made history in the mile, for the BBC prize.

Mercifully, the new favourite for the 2010 renewal of the corporation's honour fulfils every possible criterion implied by the designation of the contest. Graeme McDowell is not only a golfer of extraordinary ability and achievement, but exudes the kind of personality that could lead you astray.

It is a little unfortunate for the population of Northern Ireland that McDowell has dislodged his countryman, the multiple champion jumps jockey, Tony McCoy, from the head of the betting market, as this seems certain to split the vote from across the water. Nor could either even expect unanimity from his home country, since both are natives of Antrim.

Throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, however, McDowell should have a pronounced advantage. Not only are those who play and watch golf substantially more numerous than those who back horses, but McDowell's monumental achievements in a single year - the first Briton in four decades to win the US Open and completing the singles victory that regained the Ryder Cup for Europe - are on a truly global scale.

To those in the racing community, McCoy has long seemed a credible candidate because of his sustained excellence over the years, culminating in his first victory in the Grand National last April aboard Don't Push It. But, despite domination of a hard game in Britain, his is an essentially local pre-eminence. Of course, parochialism has been no obstruction to landing the award throughout its frequently infuriating existence. Every time a cricket or rugby player or team is honoured, it is impossible not to reflect that these are, essentially, British Commonwealth sports of limited participation, with cricket at Test level played by only ten countries on the entire planet.

McDowell has excelled in a sport that is now fiercely contested at the highest level in every continent, to a standard which ordinary handicappers find incomprehensible. But it could be premature to conclude that this will be enough to make the Portrush man a shoo-in for an election in which the vast majority of voters will be English.

These are, after all, the same people who thought Norman Wisdom, Arthur Askey and the Carry On pictures were funny.