Dubai: Justin Rose says taking a week off has left him with all the ingredients to overtake Tommy Fleetwood in the Race to Dubai at this weekend’s season-ending DP World Tour Championship.
Just over 250,000 points separates the two Englishmen heading into the finale at Jumeirah Golf Estates, which tees-off on Thursday.
Fleetwood needs to equal or better Rose’s finish to win the overall season’s honour, while Rose needs to finish no worse than solo fifth to overtake him.
Rose won his past two tournaments back-to-back in China and Turkey, before skipping last week’s penultimate round of the season in South Africa to rest, meanwhile Fleetwood has played in all three, finishing tied for 20th, 23rd and 10th respectively.
“I ticked all the boxes I wanted to last week, and I’ve arrived in Dubai, fresh, ready to go, and excited,” said Rose.
“Those are the main ingredients really, for playing well. You can never force a good week, but the recipe is in place to continue doing what I’ve done the last few weeks.”
Fleetwood, he said, by comparison could be starting to flag after playing last week, but will still put up a good fight.
“I was impressed with his weekend at Sun City,” he said of Fleetwood. “He’s been on a long run of golf now, and I’m sure he’s getting tired.
“He maybe hasn’t been scoring as well as he was earlier in the summer but I think he’s playing well. So I fully expect him to have a good week, and it probably will happen this week.
“I still take Tommy’s chances. His lead is significant. It means I’ve got to play well.
“All I wanted was to come in here thinking that if I win, I could still do it. I didn’t want to be too far behind, that if he finished second, I still couldn’t win.”
Having finished runner-up twice in this event in 2012 and 2014, and having won the European Tour’s Order of Merit in 2007 with victory in the last event at Valderrama, Rose definitely has better form in pressure-cooker events.
“This is also one of my favourite places to play golf, so there’s no excuses almost,” he said. “Definitely this is a tournament I would love to win, and this would be a great week to do it.
“To win the Race to Dubai I have to contend in this tournament one way or another. I need to finish towards the top end of the leaderboard, and if you’re going to do that, you may as well focus on trying to win.
“The objective is quite simple and clear from that point of view. But it’s too early to start thinking about winning. It’s just about putting myself in position and getting it done when you have that chance.”
If it doesn’t happen this week, he said: “I would say, so be it. I think I’ve given it a great run here towards the end.
“Yeah, it would be disappointing of course. I’ve had tough losses in the past, and you absorb it and you move on. It’s part of golf.”
