It’s the final week of the European Tour season and the Race to Dubai has come down to the wire with the honour of being the No 1 player of the year at stake during the DP World Tour Championship.
That the champion player of the season is being found out in the last tournament of the season — year after year — is a testament to the fact that the competition at the top of the European Tour is intense. Four players — Henrik Stenson, Danny Willett, Alex Noren and Rory McIlroy — are in the running this year as the Race to Dubai enters its final stretch at the Earth course of Jumeirah Golf Estates.
Obviously, the Race to Dubai honour is one part of the competition, and then there is the tournament itself. Having won a season-ending event myself — at the 2006 Volvo Masters when it used to be held at Valderrama — I know it is a special feeling when you beat a field comprising the top-60 players.
A most interesting aspect of a season-ending championship is the several battles that are played out this week. So, you have the tournament title and the Race to Dubai crown. There is also a fight to the finish inside the top 10 of the Race to Dubai, because that makes for a nice little bonus at the end of a long, hard season. Depending on your finish inside the top 15, or the top 30 in the rankings, you get exempted to various major championships. Then there is also the Rookie of the Year honours.
Let’s just have a look at the tournament. I think there is a common thread in all the previous seven champions, starting from Lee Westwood in 2009, to Alvaro Quiros and Robert Karlsson, on to Stenson and McIlroy (both two-time winners) — they have all been exceptional drivers of the golf ball. And that is one pre-requisite of doing well on the Greg Norman-designed Earth course.
It is a long golf course and the fairways are quite generous, but straight and long off the tee has always helped. And because the greens roll well and do not have many hidden borrows, it is even better if you can hit more greens in regulation. At least that has been Stenson’s gameplan on this golf course.
After the astonishing final round that Alex Noren had to win the Nedbank Golf Challenge, the Swede has a good chance of winning the Race to Dubai, but at almost 600,000 points behind the leader, the real battle is down to Stenson and No 2 Willett. I truly believe McIlroy can win the championship, but he will then have to depend on the top three players having one of the worst weeks of their season.
Given how fresh Stenson is compared to Willett, and how the latter is struggling with his form, it would be easy to position the Swede as the favourite to become the European No 1 for the second time in his career. Having said that, we all have seen over the past couple of years what a fighter Willett is. I loved the way he chased Rory last year and you can rest assured that he is not going to give up easily.
(Jeev Milkha Singh is a four-time champion on the European Tour)
