For Rory McIlroy, it is only a matter of turning up at this week’s DP World Tour Championship, the finale to the season and the end of his year’s work.
He knows nobody can catch him, that a fifth career Race to Dubai order of merit title on the DP World Tour is already his; and that he is so far ahead of everyone, with Masters champion Jon Rahm his closest pursuer but too far adrift to play catchup, says all you need to know about what sort of season the Northern Irishman has enjoyed, with wins in the Dubai Desert Classic and the Scottish Open.
This will be McIlroy’s fifth European Tour order of merit title, yet without the drama of his first – back in 2012 – when he needed to win the Tour Championship. As he put it back then, “I’ve played so well throughout the year, and I didn’t want to just let it tail off timidly. I wanted to come here and finish in style.”
If anything, that year of golf in 2012 – five wins worldwide, including a second career Major when winning the US PGA – set the benchmark for McIlroy going forward, given that he also became world number one for the first time and indeed had the biggest lead in the world rankings since Tiger Woods.
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Although McIlroy hasn’t matched his dominance of that 2012 campaign this season, when he still required a win in the season’s closing event to get over the line, the quirkiness of the points accumulation on the Race to Dubai standings this time around means that the destination of the title is already a done deal for the world number two and he doesn’t have reason to look over his shoulder. He can focus fully on the tournament itself.
Only the leading 50 players on the R2D points list have made it to the Earth course in Dubai – McIlroy one of three Irish players, along with Shane Lowry and Tom McKibbin in the field – but there are other subplots to be played out in the desert.
One of them is the confirmation of the 10 players who will earn full PGA Tour privileges for the 2024 season.
As of now, the 10 men in position to avail of the new policy deal between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour are: Adrian Meronk, Ryan Fox, Victor Perez, Thorbjorn Olesen, Alexander Bjork, Sami Valimaki, Bob MacIntyre, Jorge Campillo, Ryo Hisatune and Rasmus Hojgaard. This week’s championship, however, offers opportunities to, especially, Yannik Paul, Marcel Siem and Matthieu Pavon to displace one or more of those ahead of them.
There are 2,000 R2D points for the winner in Dubai, which could potentially provide a career-changing pathway for those even further down the rankings. McKibbin, for instance, currently lies in 41st place in the order of merit but is 619 points behind Hojgaard, the player holding the 10th card heading into the championship.
Meanwhile, Lilia Vu’s win in The Annika moved her to within touching distance of France’s Celine Boutier heading into this week’s CME Group LPGA Tour Championship in Florida, confined to the leading 60 players on the order of merit.
Stephanie Meadow’s missed cut in The Annika ended her hopes of gatecrashing her way into the megabucks tour finales (she ultimately finished 72nd) but Leona Maguire, in 17th, returns to Tiburon where she finished runner-up to Lydia Ko last year. Ko is one of the big names who failed to make it back this year, with Lexi Thompson another who finished outside the top 60 on the points standings.
There are nine Irish players – Marc Boucher, Simon Bryan, Luke Donnelly, Joe Hanney, Alex Maguire, AJ McCabe, Robert Moran, Brandon St John and Michael Young – in the field for the final qualifying of the development Alps Tour, which takes place Thursday-Saturday in Rome.
