As has been the case for over 10 years, the DP World Tour ends its season with the Dubai Championship, which opens on Thursday. However, as in many previous seasons, the winner of the Race to Dubai championship will be the one who has played sparingly on the Tour itself. In fact, this might be the most anti-climatic finale yet.
This is a stark contrast to the PGA Tour, where the FedEx Cup Series encourages golfers to accumulate points by participating in as many events on that tour as possible.
It wasn’t always like this. The Race to Dubai is an honor that began before the FedEx Cup. It began in 1937 as the Order of Merit. Charles Whitcombe won his first championship. Subsequent winners will be a who’s who of European golfers, including multiple winners such as Ryder Cup stalwarts Colin Montgomerie (eight wins) and Seve Ballesteros (six wins).
But this year’s closing event is another year where it feels like a showcase for stars who rarely make it on tour. Four-time Race to Dubai winner Rory McIlroy and 2019 winner Jon Rahm are in first and second places, but no one has been able to catch McIlroy since last weekend’s Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa.
And that makes the disconnect with the season-ending race even more stark. The two players are ranked 2nd and 3rd in the world golf rankings. And they are stalwarts of the European Ryder Cup team. However, Northern Ireland’s McIlroy and Spain’s Lahm barely participated in the DP World Tour this season. And while McIlroy is scheduled to compete in this event, he could skip it and become the fifth winner.
Of the 43 events on the Tour, McIlroy competed in nine and took first place in the Race To Dubai. Rahm finished second after playing in seven games, and the drama turned to whether they would repeat themselves as champions of the tournament itself. Third place goes to Poland’s Adrian Meronk, who has played in 23 tournaments on the DP World Tour.
Meronk has a chance to win another award: full membership on the PGA Tour. That puts him in the top 10 of the Race to Dubai, which has not yet competed on the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour has higher prize money and more points in the World Golf Rankings. It also means Meronk, like McIlroy and Rahm, will play more on the PGA Tour than the DP World Tour next season.
Welcome to golf’s new anomaly in which European Tour champions rarely play on tour. How did you get here? It’s confusing.
In the chaotic world of professional golf, new incentives abound as the PGA Tour and DP World Tour join forces to fend off the threat of LIV Golf, a new league sponsored by Saudi Arabia. And they are overturning the existing order.
Although a tentative agreement has been reached to halt litigation between LIV and the Tour, one of their biggest concerns is that players are being lured into more lucrative LIV contracts. But the core of the current agreement between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour is a system that would allow Europe’s highest-ranked players to play in the United States on the PGA Tour.
The Race to Dubai leaderboard is the result of two factors. This is how certain events, such as the four majors, are sanctioned by both tours to earn more points. Other advanced events award more points. Strong players like McIlroy and Rahm compete in a stronger field of events, so they end up earning more points by playing well in fewer events.
For McIlroy, only four of the nine events included in the Race to Dubai were DP World Tour events. The rest are on or approved for the PGA Tour. For Rahm, the numbers were small. Only participated in 2 out of 7 tournaments.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Last year, McIlroy won the Race to Dubai in a similar number of plays on the DP World Tour (Rahm won the DP World Tour Championship).
In 2021, PGA Tour member Collin Morikawa became the first American to win the Race to Dubai. He also won the British Open, but has only competed outside the U.S. at the Scottish Open (sanctioned by the PGA Tour) and the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. In neither case did he make the top 50.
By contrast, this year Meronk competed in four majors and 19 other events at DP World. Although he ranked 3rd in the Race to Dubai, he only earned 46th place in the world rankings due to low points earned in the European competition.
Norway’s Victor Hovland is 14th in the Race to Dubai rankings, but 4th in the world rankings. In other words, it is the value of the points. He has competed in seven DP World Tour events, but has been sanctioned by the PGA Tour in all but one, the BMW PGA Championship.
Essentially, the Race to Dubai’s competitor list is a mix of players who have performed well in DP World Tour events and are looking to move up to the PGA Tour, as well as players who have performed well in majors and other co-sanctioned events. . The result is end-of-season tournaments and season-long prize money, which can be more confusing than climactic.
In fact, the real drama may have been when the last player on the PGA promotion list, Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard, jumped five places to 16th.
Joost Luiten of the Netherlands, who held that spot until the last tournament, has dropped five places since last week and is now ranked 22nd. Hojgaard and Luiten have both played in more than 20 events each on the DP World Tour, giving them the opportunity to play more on the PGA Tour and less on the DP Tour next season.
Meanwhile, current PGA Tour players outside the top 125 on the money list earn full membership on the DP World Tour (ranks 126-200).
When this was announced last month, DP World Tour tournament committee chairman David Howell labeled the demotion to the tour as a positive for players. “When we announced our strategic partnership with the PGA Tour in November 2021, one of our primary goals 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 representing DP World Tour and LIV golf players said promoting one group to the PGA Tour and demoting another to the DP World Tour would further divide the professional golf ranks. Agents said this has made it more difficult for many players to earn World Golf Ranking points to qualify for majors and other major tournaments.
“All of these PGA Tour events are way higher in the world golf rankings than the European Tour.” The agent spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the potential ramifications of speaking publicly about the tour. “They argued how you can be top 100 on the PGA Tour and top 300 in the world when the depth on the PGA Tour is better than anywhere else. All right. However, this put the European Tour in a corner. “I decided to participate in this feeder tour.”
Next year, the format will change and become more like the FedEx Cup, with players qualifying for the event and then the field shrinking for each tournament. So there will be 70 players competing in the 2024 Abu Dhabi Championship and 50 players in the final DP World Tour Championship.
In the end, what matters is ensuring that the sport’s stars play in their final European Tour event, regardless of how much they have played on tour during the season.
“The stories that unfold throughout the season are for the hard-core golf enthusiasts,” the agent said. “The average sports enthusiast just wants to see a superstar. Commercial products live and die by it.”
