Hardly played in a Tour, but still won the championship

The DP World Tour concludes its season at the Championship in Dubai, which starts on Thursday, as it has done for more than a decade. But as in recent seasons, the winner of the Race to Dubai championship will be someone who has played sparingly on the tour itself. In fact, this might be the most anticlimactic finale yet.

This is in stark contrast to the PGA Tour, where the FedEx Cup series pushes golfers to play as many events on that tour as possible to accumulate points.

It hasn’t always been this way. The Race to Dubai is an honor that long predates the FedEx Cup. It started in 1937 as the Order of Merit. Charles Whitcombe won the inaugural prize. The subsequent winners are a who’s who of European golfers, including multiple winners such as Ryder Cup great Colin Montgomerie with eight and Seve Ballesteros with six.

But this year is another one in which the final event feels like a showcase for stars who have been largely absent from the tour. Rory McIlroyfour-time winner of the Race to Dubai, and Jon Rahm who won him in 2019 are in first and second place, but after last weekend’s Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa no one can overtake McIlroy.

And that makes the disconnect with the season-ending race even greater. The two players are ranked second and third in the world golf rankings. And they are loyal members of the European Ryder Cup team. But Northern Ireland’s McIlroy and Spain’s Rahm have hardly played on the DP World Tour this season. And while McIlroy is set to compete in the event, he could skip it and still be crowned the winner for the fifth time.

Of the 43 events on the tour, McIlroy has played nine and is ranked first in the Race To Dubai; Rahm has played seven to get into second place and the drama has turned to whether they will repeat as champions of the tournament itself. In third place Adriaan Meronk from Poland, who has played 23 tournaments on the DP World Tour.

Meronk is a lock to win another prize: full membership on the PGA Tour. This goes to the top 10 finishers of the Race to Dubai who are not yet on the PGA Tour, which has higher prizes and earns more points towards the world golf rankings; it also means that Meronk, like McIlroy and Rahm, will likely play more on the PGA Tour than the DP World Tour next season.

Welcome to the new abnormal golf, where European Tour champions hardly play on tour. How did we get here? It’s complicated.

In the turbulent world of professional golf, where the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour are working together to stave off the threat of LIV Golf, the new Saudi-backed league, new incentives abound. And they turn the existing order upside down.

While there is a tentative agreement in place with LIV to pause litigation between LIV and the tours, one of their biggest concerns is players being lured away with more lucrative LIV contracts. But the core of the current agreement between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour is a system for the highest-ranked players in Europe to play in the United States on the PGA Tour.

The rankings for the Race to Dubai are the result of two factors: how certain events, such as the four majors, are sanctioned by the two tours and therefore award more points; and the higher number of points awarded to other higher level events. Because dominant players like McIlroy and Rahm compete in events with stronger fields, they ultimately earn more points by playing well in fewer events.

In McIlroy’s case, only four of his nine events credited to the Race to Dubai were DP World Tour events; the others were on or sanctioned by the PGA Tour. With Rahm it was less: only two of his seven tournaments.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Last year, McIlroy won the Race to Dubai (and Rahm won the DP World Tour Championship) with a similar amount of play on the DP World Tour.

In 2021, Collin Morikawa a full member of the PGA Tour, became the first American to win the Race to Dubai. He also won the British Open, but played in only two other events outside the United States: the Scottish Open (which is also sanctioned by the PGA Tour) and the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. In neither case did he finish in the top 50.

This year, on the other hand, Meronk played the four majors and the other 19 events at the DP World. Although he is third in the Race to Dubai, he is only 46th in the world rankings because he achieved fewer points in the European events.

Victor Hovland from Norway is ranked 14th in the Race to Dubai, but is the fourth best player in the world rankings. Again, it’s about the value of the points. He is credited with seven DP World Tour events, but all but one, the BMW PGA Championship, are also on the PGA Tour.

At its core, the list of contenders for the Race to Dubai is a mix of players who have done well in DP World Tour events and moved on to the PGA Tour, and players who have played well at the Majors and other co-endorsed events. . The result is a season-ending tournament and a season prize that could be more confusing than climactic.

The real drama may lie with the last player on the PGA promotion list, Rasmus Hojgaard of Denmark, who rose five places to 16th.

That spot was held until the last tournament by Joost Luiten from the Netherlands, which dropped five places after last week and is now in 22nd place. Both Hojgaard and Luiten each played more than 20 events on the DP World Tour for the opportunity to play more on the PGA Tour next season and less on the DP Tour.

On the other hand, current PGA Tour players who finish outside the top 125 on the money list will receive full membership to the DP World Tour, for figures 126 to 200.

When this was announced last month, David Howell, chairman of the DP World Tour tournament committee, categorized the relegation to that tour as a positive for players. “When we announced our strategic alliance with the PGA Tour in November 2021, one of the key objectives was to provide as many opportunities as possible for members of both tours,” he said. “This is another perfect example of how this works.”

An agent who represents players on the DP World Tour and LIV Golf said elevating one group to the PGA Tour and demoting another to the DP World Tour further divided the professional golf ranks. It has made it harder for many players to earn world golf rankings points to get them into the majors and other major tournaments.

“All of these PGA Tour events are well above the European Tour in terms of world golf rankings points,” said the agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the fallout of speaking publicly about the Tour. “They had the argument that the depth on the PGA Tour was better than anywhere else, so how could you be in the top 100 on the PGA Tour and 300th in the world. I understand. But that pushed the European Tour into a corner. It ended up in this feeder tour.”

Next year the format will change and become more similar to the FedEx Cup, with players qualifying for an event and the field shrinking at each tournament. So it will be 70 players at the Abu Dhabi Championship and 50 players at the last DP World Tour Championship in 2024.

The bottom line is that the stars of the sport compete in the final European Tour events, regardless of how much they have played on tour during the season.

“The season story is for the die-hard golf geeks,” the agent said. “The average sports fan only wants to see superstars. The commercial product lives and dies by it.”