Turkish Airlines Open: The Sprint for the Finish Line
By Matt Coles
Just three tournaments remain in the final stretch of the 2019 European Tour season, with the Turkish Airlines Open next up for the Tour.
The final three events are all Rolex Series tournaments, including this week’s Turkish Airlines Open, with more Race to Dubai points on offer for those at the right end of the leaderboard.
This week’s event in Antalya will feature just 75 golfers. They will include the top 70 on the Race to Dubai rankings, plus four invitations and a single national spot, with no cut at the halfway point.
From here, the top 60 will make it through to the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa next Thursday, before only the top 50 will battle it out at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai between November 21-24.
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The 2019 edition of the Turkish Airlines Open will be the seventh, after first coming onto the calendar back in 2013. The Montgomerie Maxx held the event for the first three years, before it moved to Carya in 2016. This year’s edition will be back at its original home.
Despite there having only been six previous editions of the tournament, two men have already tasted success on multiple occasions.
The first to do so was Frenchman Victor Dubuisson, who won the inaugural event back in 2013, before winning the tournament for the second time in 2015.
Justin Rose is the other man to have won this event multiple times, having won the event back-to-back in 2017 and 2018. He will be aiming to become just the fourth man to win an event in back-to-back-to-back years in the history of the European Tour.
Brooks Koepka and Thorbjorn Olesen are the other two men to have tasted victory in Antalya, but neither will feature this week.
In fact, with Dubuisson not featuring either, Rose will be the only previous Turkish Airlines Open champion to play the event in 2019.
The Englishman will tee off in the final group on Thursday, getting underway at 12 noon local time (GMT+3). He will feature alongside RTD No.1 Bernd Wiesberger and No.3 Shane Lowry.
The English duo of Matt Wallace and Danny Willett will play alongside Francesco Molinari, while the American pair of Patrick Reed and Kurt Kitayama will partner Robert MacIntyre on Thursday.
Play starts at 10:00 local time, when Aaron Rai, George Coetzee, and Richard Sterne kick the event running of the Turkish Airlines Open off.
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Selected Groups (* = 10th tee start):
- 11:20: Alex Noren (SWE), Lee Westwood (ENG), Erik van Rooyen (RSA)
- 11:30: Padraig Harrington (IRL), Victor Perez (FRA), Matthias Schwab (AUT)
- 11:40: Robert MacIntyre (SCO), Patrick Reed (USA), Kurt Kitayama (USA)
- 11:50: Matt Wallace (ENG), Francesco Molinari (ITA), Danny Willett (ENG)
- 12:00: Bernd Wiesberger (AUT), Justin Rose (ENG), Shane Lowry (IRL)