How Jon Rahm’s remarkable renaissance has set up Race to Dubai finale for the ages
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Luke Donald may have had a little smile to himself when he examined the top of the leaderboard at last week’s Abu Dhabi Championship. The penultimate event of the DP World Tour season saw Jon Rahm come in from the cold to win his first event on the tour (excluding majors) in four years, fellow former LIV Golf exile Tyrrell Hatton finish second and Rory McIlroy come home third.
Three of European Ryder Cup captain Donald’s most important players dominating one of their home tour’s biggest events – with the promise of more battles to come over the next 10 months before the 2027 showdown with the US at Adare Manor – bodes awfully well.
It’s an exciting time for the DP World Tour, with the demise of LIV Golf meaning that many of the sport’s big names, from both Europe and overseas, who would otherwise be playing elsewhere next year will be plying their trade on the circuit formerly known as the European Tour.
Leaderboards as star-studded as the Abu Dhabi Championship will become more commonplace, attracting more eyeballs to the tour and giving homegrown players a much more regular taste of elite competition. In that vein, this week’s $10m DP World Tour Championship at the Earth Course in Dubai could be the most exciting finale to the Race to Dubai – the tour’s season-long order of merit – for many years.
McIlroy vs Rahm vs Eugenio Chacarra vs Patrick Reed vs Aaron Rai vs Ryan Fox. It has the perfect blend of global superstars who are in good form (Rahm and McIlroy), two more recent major winners (Rai and Fox), a pantomime villain (Reed) and an up-and-coming European talent who has had a superb season and is now trying to hold off the big horses charging from behind (Chacarra). And if you have a soft spot for true outsiders, you’ll be pleased to know that even Casey Jarvis, Jayden Schaper and Daniel Hillier still have a mathematical chance of taking the crown should they win the tournament and other results fall in their favour – making it a nine-way battle.
Seven-time Race to Dubai winner (including each of the last four) McIlroy must be the favourite, with only he and the much more unproven Chacarra being in the enviable position of knowing that winning the DP World Tour Championship guarantees victory in the order of merit regardless of everyone else’s results. The Northern Irishman will also match Colin Montgomerie for the all-time record of eight if he gets over the line this weekend.
Ryder Cup hopeful Chacarra has won three times on the DP World Tour this season and would send a serious message to Donald if he can hold his own when the pressure is truly ramped up. It’s a golden opportunity for the 26-year-old, who has said this week that he is relishing the chance to prove himself.
Meanwhile, the fact that Rahm is in contention at all is remarkable. Apart from finishing in a tie for second at the US PGA Championship, he didn’t trouble the scorers at the majors this year, played most of his regular golf in the now-deceased black hole that was LIV and then contrived to finish dead last in the entire field (excluding players who withdrew) in September’s BMW PGA Championship once he was allowed back on the DP World Tour.
But he looked supreme when triumphing in Abu Dhabi last week and is suddenly in the position where if he can take victory at the DP World Tour Championship this week, and McIlroy finishes lower than second with Chacarra lower than eighth, he’ll snatch the unlikeliest of Race to Dubai crowns.
Whether linked to the end of LIV or not, Rahm has had a renaissance and looked much more content in the aftermath of last week’s success – a happy Jon Rahm is invariably an effective Jon Rahm. It is undoubtedly a flaw in the system that he could triumph in the season-long order of merit simply by sweeping the two big-money events at the end of the year but he is speaking like a man on a mission as he tries to win a second Race to Dubai (after glory in 2019) and move a step closer to the six won by his hero Seve Ballesteros.
“I’m coming in with a little extra incentive,” admitted Rahm in his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday. “I really didn’t think even winning last week I was going to have a chance to possibly win the Race to Dubai at all. So that obviously gives this week a little bit more meaning than it did before.
“It would mean a great deal. I think it would just be more of a step towards hopefully getting closer to what Seve was able to achieve.
“But it would still be a long way to go. I think that second one would mean a lot, if I ever get to five or six, and then after that, you think about Monty and by then, you’ll probably be thinking about Rory, whatever he’s at.
“It would be special, not knowing I had a chance, come in the last two weeks and get it done.”
Victory for a rejuvenated Rahm would indeed be special, but the nine-way battle for Race to Dubai glory this week will be pretty spectacular itself.
