Dubai: Henrik Stenson primed himself to successfully defend a title for the first time in his career as Spaniard Rafa Cabrera-Bello joined him at the top of the leaderboard on the penultimate day of the DP World Tour Championship here on Saturday.
Winner of the historic double at this same venue last year, Stenson was the sole leader on Friday after a six-under par 66. On Saturday, the 38-year-old Swede simply took off from where he left and built on his lead with a sedate third round of four-under 68 and a three-day effort of 14-under par 202 and stay joint leader with the 30-year-old Cabrero-Bello.
Chasing the duo down the straight on the final day will be a wide variety of golfers including Englishman Justin Rose who is three shots adrift on 11-under 205 followed by four others including Englishman Tyrell Hatton, Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen, Frenchman Victor Dubuisson and world number one and overnight leader Rory McIlroy, all on 10-under par 206.
When Stenson won the DP World Tour Championship last year, the Swede ensured he became the first man to win The Race to Dubai and the FedEx Cup on the US PGA Tour in the same year.
Currently second in the standings, Stenson took a rather conservative approach while coming up with four birdies — on the fourth, eighth, 14th and 15th holes — to maintain his position at the top. “It would be great to achieve a double here — to defend and to get a win this season. It’s still been a good one, but still at the end of the year when we assess it, we will always look at the trophies and there has not been any yet. We’ll try and make it happen, but there are a lot of strong players out there and Rafa [Cabrero-Bello] seems to be on fire. We’ll see if we can hold him off tomorrow,” Stenson promised.
The Dubai Desert Classic champion in 2012, Cabrero-Bello was left unfazed challenging some of the best golfers in the world on Sunday. “Obviously, I know they are the best players in the world. I’m happy to be able to have beat them occasionally. I know when I play very good, I really believe I can beat anyone. I’ve done it before to prove it to myself. So, I’m just going to try and enjoy it, and if it happens, great. If it doesn’t happen, then I’m still going to put up a good fight,” he promised.
McIlroy started off well but fell on the final stretch with a couple of bogeys on the 12th and 13th holes undoing all his hard work going into Sunday’s final round. “I will just try to get off to a fast start, get off to the start that I got off to on Thursday, put some pressure on them and see what happens. I can’t afford to stay patient tomorrow. I need to go and get some birdies from the off and see where I can go from there,” McIlroy said.
“I need to be aggressive. I need to go at pins. I need to try to hit it close and hole some putts,” he added.
The performer of the day was, however, Scotland’s Marc Warren as he finished off with seven birdies including four on the back nine to match Cabrera-Bello’s third day score of 65.
