And the winner is ... Dubai

Philip Parkin

• Last Updated: November 11. 2009 9:27PM UAE / November 11. 2009 5:27PM GMT

Lee Westwood is on track for a dramatic showdown with Rory McIlroy in Dubai next week. Stuart Franklin / Getty Images

Whatever happens in Hong Kong and Australia over the next four days, the Race to Dubai will go down to the wire and the format deserves a big pat on the back.

The stage is set for a dramatic showdown between Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy at Greg Norman’s Earth course next week, although Martin Kaymer and a cluster of other players are still within a shout of a bumper pay day.

While there can only be one winner in the Race to Dubai, the biggest winner is Dubai itself, having overcome all the doubts placed in its way over the past 17 months.

Eyebrows were raised in June of last year when the European Tour announced the new format for the season-long Order of Merit spanning 50 tournaments this year at 27 destinations from Wentworth to Shanghai.

When the financial crisis that had been brewing reached its peak a few months later, sceptics wasted no time in predicting the bursting of Dubai’s bubble, as they have been almost gleefully ever since.

They were given more ammunition when the prize funds for the Race to Dubai, and next week’s final episode, the Dubai World Championship, were cut by 25 per cent.

All along there have been murmurings that Norman’s spectacular Earth creation at Jumeirah Golf Estates may not be ready for the occasion.

Even Dubai’s biggest supporters have had their doubts, but how satisfying it will be for everyone connected with the Tour and its new focal point in the Emirates that we are guaranteed a superb finale to the season.

When I made my first visit in 1989 to play in the inaugural Desert Classic, as impressed as I was with everything I experienced it was impossible to imagine where it would all lead. But even then there was a sense that something out of the ordinary, well beyond the greening of the desert to form the Emirates Golf Club, had begun.

For the next four days the Race to Dubai continues simultaneously in Asia and Australia, with Westwood entering the Hong Kong Open holding a fragile €52,321 (Dh287,286) lead over McIlroy while sixth-placed Geoff Ogilvy hopes to boost his challenge in the JBWere Masters in Melbourne. Ogilvy has an ideal opportunity, with the three men immediately ahead of him, Kaymer, Ross Fisher and Paul Casey, all taking the week off.

While this is not yet a two-horse race, I find it hard to look beyond Westwood and McIlroy, and although the Englishman’s vast experience makes him the hot favourite, McIlroy is sensing a remarkable Dubai treble.

His brilliant final round of 63 in China’s HSBC Championship last Sunday gave him great momentum to carry into the last two events.

Rory is young and fearless, and having just missed out in a play-off in Hong Kong last year he will feel he can go one better this time and grab a big advantage to bring to Dubai where he scored his first victory as a professional in February.

It is almost inconceivable that in one year a 20-year-old could win the Desert Classic, the Dubai World Championship and the Race to Dubai, but McIlroy is a special talent and will believe he can pull it off.

While the Northern Irishman had a brilliant finish in Shanghai, Westwood managed only a closing 71 on a day when three players went round in nine-under par, leaving the door wide open when he might have closed it.

He will need to regroup, but he has the mental toughness to come through. He proved that by going head-to-head with the eight-times European No 1 Colin Montgomerie in 2000 to land his one Order of Merit title to date.

With so much money at stake a posse of players face a frantic battle to get into the top 60 who tee it up in Dubai, and as a Welshman I hope that Bradley Dredge, Jamie Donaldson and Stephen Dodd, currently at Nos 57, 58 and 59, hang on.

The Race to Dubai winner collects US$1,500,000 (Dh5.5m) from the US$7,500,000 Bonus Pool while the Dubai World Championship carries a tournament first prize of US$1,250,000

Put them together, which is what Westwood and McIlroy are trying to do, and you still come up US$250,000 short of what Tiger Woods will earn, even should the world No1, unthinkably, miss the cut in Melbourne this weekend.

It has taken US$3million in appearance money to lure Tiger Down Under, and whether you’d begrudge him that or not, there can be no argument that the game’s greatest player is not firing on all cylinders.

Twice in recent weeks he has gone head to head with world No 2 Phil Mickelson and lost, and despite his FedEx Cup success it’s now a long time since he has played his best golf.

He is still managing to win tournaments, certainly, but he is finding it difficult these days and having to work tremendously hard, using every bit of his ability to get it around.

Tiger has a lot of work to do on his swing in the winter. He’s spraying his drives and his all-round play is a far cry from what we saw in 1997 when he won the Masters by 12 shots, and in 2000 when he had a 15-stroke winning margin in the US Open.

He says he’s happy, but the fairways and greens in regulation statistics tell another story. With Mickelson poised to mount a serious challenge, and Ernie Els also beginning to look the real deal again, we could be in for some fireworks next year.


(The former European and US Tour player Philip Parkin is now a member of the TV golf commentary team for the BBC in the UK and Golf Channel in the US)