The European Tour’s Finale: The DP World Tour Championship
By Matt Coles
Here it is… The season finale. The European Tour season comes to a conclusion this week in Dubai, with the DP World Tour Championship.
Five players come into the season-ending DP World Tour Championship with a chance to win the Race to Dubai, with Austrian Bernd Wiesberger sitting pretty at the top of the leaderboard.
The tournament itself is the last of the eight Rolex Series events in the 2019 campaign, and it carries the biggest ever prize in golf, with the winner on Sunday taking home a cool $3,000,000 from the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai.
The Earth Course at Jumeirah plays host to the event and it is a monster. Over 7,600 yards and is a par 72.
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Henrik Stenson and Rory McIlroy are both two-time winners of the DP World Tour Championship, while Matthew Fitzpatrick, Jon Rahm, and Danny Willett have won the last three editions of the event, with the 2016 Masters Champion the reigning holder of the title.
Lee Westwood won the first iteration of the tournament, a decade ago, with Robert Karlsson and Alvaro Quiros lifting the Dubai World Championship trophy before it changed its name to its current DP World Tour guise.
All bar Quiros and Karlsson are in this week’s field, which sees only the top 50 golfers on the Race to Dubai standings taking part.
Like the last couple of Rolex Series events, the field will go out in reverse order according to their current standing in the Race to Dubai leaderboard. That sorts the opening day. From there on, the top two after Round 1 will tee off last for Round 2, and so on through to Sunday’s final round.
Two of the former winners, in Rory McIlroy and Matthew Fitzpatrick, will tee up together on the first day, going out at 12:20. Fitzpatrick is the last of those who have the chance to win the Race to Dubai crown for 2019, but he needs a minor miracle for it to happen, including winning the event.
After that pair, Jon Rahm and Shane Lowry, the men who sit 3rd and 4th respectively, will start their opening rounds, before Bernd Wiesberger and Tommy Fleetwood get their weeks underway in the final pairing, starting at 12:40 local (GMT+4) on Thursday afternoon.
Other pairings of interest include Justin Rose and former winner Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson plays alongside Patrick Reed, and there is an all South African duo of Louis Oosthuizen and Erik van Rooyen, the men who round out the top ten on the Race to Dubai list.
As well as the Race to Dubai crown, there is the battle for the European Tour’s Rookie of the Year and Graduate of the Year. Robert MacIntyre is in play for both of those, and he currently sits in 11th in the standings.
The Scotsman will tee up alongside Kurt Kitayama on Thursday, his main rival for Rookie of the Year, with the American sitting just 90 points behind him. Only a further 40 points behind that sits Victor Perez, who could challenge MacIntyre in both categories.
The action gets underway in Dubai at 08:30 local (GMT+4), as Australia’s Scott Hend and Denmark’s Joachim Hansen get the event underway.
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Selected Groups:
- 09:50: Henrik Stenson (SWE), Patrick Reed (USA)
- 10:05: Justin Rose (ENG), Lee Westwood (ENG)
- 11:50: Robert MacIntyre (SCO), Kurt Kitayama (USA)
- 12:00: Louis Oosthuizen (RSA), Erik van Rooyen (RSA)
- 12:10: Tyrrell Hatton (ENG), Matt Wallace (ENG)
- 12:20: Rory McIlroy (NIR), Matthew Fitzpatrick (ENG)
- 12:30: Shane Lowry (IRL), Jon Rahm (ESP)
- 12:40: Bernd Wiesberger (AUT), Tommy Fleetwood (ENG)