European Tour: Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship Preview

The first Rolex Series event of the new season begins on Thursday, with the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA taking centre stage.

The Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship is the first of eight Rolex Series events across the year, with each of the eight having a higher prize fund, as well as more points on offer for the season-long Race to Dubai.

The Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA is alongside the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open, Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open, BMW PGA Championship, Italian Open, Turkish Airlines Open, Nedbank Golf Challenge hosted by Gary Player and the DP World Tour Championship as the eight events that sit a level above the rest of the European Tour schedule.

There is 7,000 Race to Dubai points on offer at Abu Dhabi GC, with the winner of this week’s tournament almost sure to be at the top of the leaderboard come Sunday evening.

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The current top three on the Race to Dubai list, in Branden Grace, Pablo Larrazabal and Rasmus Højgaard, will all take part this week, in the hope of becoming the first multiple winner in the 2020 season.

This will be the 15th edition of the event, and the second as a Rolex Series event, first taking on that mantle in the 2019 season, where Shane Lowry took the victory, and the Irishman comes into the tournament as the defending champion.

Plenty of big names have won this tournament over the years, including the likes of Rickie Fowler, Jamie Donaldson, and Chris DiMarco. Only three men have won the event multiple times, with two of those winning it in back-to-back years.

Paul Casey is the other member of the group, winning the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship (as it was known then) in 2007 and 2009, while Tommy Fleetwood is the other two-time winner, taking the trophy home in 2017 and 2018.

Germany’s Martin Kaymer is the only man to win this event three times, and he also went back-to-back, being victorious in Abu Dhabi in 2008, 2010 and 2011.

The majority of those past winners are in the field this week, with the likes of World No.1 Brooks Koepka, BMW PGA Champion Danny Willett, and Ryder Cup veterans Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter all looking for glory.

Koepka lines up alongside the two men who won the last three editions of this event, in Fleetwood and Lowry, for the first two days, while World No.6 Patrick Cantlay makes his European Tour debut in a trio with Garcia and three-time Rolex Series winner Bernd Wiesberger.

Lee Westwood and Eddie Pepperell join Poulter in an all-English grouping for Thursday and Friday, with the threesome of Bryson DeChambeau, Matthew Fitzpatrick and last week’s South African Open hosted by the City of Johannesburg champion Branden Grace going out in the group ahead of them.

Also in action this week is 15-year-old Joshua Hill, who takes his place in the tournament after winning the Abu Dhabi Amateur Championship. He will play alongside Charl Schwartzel and Matthias Schwab for the opening two rounds of the event.

Play begins at 07:20 (GMT+4) on Thursday morning, with a two-tee set up at Abu Dhabi GC. Jeff Winther, Ross Fisher, and Justin Walters start from the 1st, while the 10th will see Robert Karlsson, Adrian Meronk and Viktor Hovland kick things off.

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Selected Tee Times (* indicates 10th tee start):

07:30* & 11:55: Sergio Garcia (ESP), Patrick Cantlay (USA), Bernd Wiesberger (AUT)
07:40* & 12:05: Brooks Koepka (USA), Tommy Fleetwood (ENG), Shane Lowry (IRL)
07:50* & 12:15: Rafa Cabrera Bello (ESP), Louis Oosthuizen (RSA), Martin Kaymer (GER)
11:55 & 07:30*: Danny Willett (ENG), Victor Perez (FRA), Matt Wallace (ENG)
12:05 & 07:40*: Bryson DeChambeau (USA), Matthew Fitzpatrick (ENG), Branden Grace (RSA)
12:15 & 07:50*: Lee Westwood (ENG), Eddie Pepperell (ENG), Ian Poulter (ENG)

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