Race To Dubai heating Up

The Race To Dubai Rankings

Just three more events for players to qualify... This week at the British Masters at Woburn, The Portugal Open and the Hong Kong Open. The Top 60 only will get in.

Players have to have played a minimum of 13 European Tour events to qualify. Unless your name is Rory McIlroy in which case you can just play 12 tournaments... This after European Tour Chief Keith Pelley decided there were 'special circumstances' surrounding McIlroy. Namely that he hurt himself playing football and missed some events.

Fair play, bend the rules to get the poster boy at the event but don't bother having rules in the first place? I don't see the same applying to Patrick Reed who's only played one less event than Rory?

Anyway, the interesting stuff is down the leader board a way: The players fighting to break into the Top 60, and the players trying to hang on to their place in the Top 60.

"Whadyamean this isn't Woburn?"

A quick glance at numbers 55-87 illustrates how tight it all is. Robert Rock, in 82nd place needs a couple of good weeks to sneak in, as do major winners Ernie Els (79th), Y.E. Yang (77th) and Graeme McDowell (63rd). Thomas Aiken occupies 50th place but will have serious distractions next season as he has just gained his USPGA Tour Card.

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GolfPunk favourite Graeme Storm has had a solid burst of form lately and is five places outside the magic 60 going into the British Masters.

Big names such as Nicolas Colsaerts (99th), Robert Karlsson (100th), Padraig Harrington (127th) and Darren Clarke (137th) all need to win in the next two weeks to have any chance of making Dubai.

A bit of back story:

The DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, will once again be the culmination of the four-tournament Final Series which, as in 2013 and 2014, will also feature the BMW Masters and the WGC-HSBC Champions in China and the Turkish Airlines Open in Antalya.

Last year Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy won The Race to Dubai for a second time, having first finished European Tour Number One in 2012, at the end of a magnificent season during which he won The Open, US PGA Championship, the European Tour's flagship event of the BMW PGA Championship and the WGC - Bridgestone Invitational.

"So yeah, I'm kind of a big deal..."

He succeeded Henrik Stenson, who won title in 2013 and became the first man to win The European Tour's Race to Dubai and FedEx Cup on the US PGA Tour in the same year.  McIlroy (2012), England's Luke Donald (2011), Germany’s Martin Kaymer (2010) and England's Lee Westwood (2009) have previously won The Race to Dubai.

From the curtain-raising Nedbank Golf Challenge in December across four continents through to the season-ending DP World Tour Championship, Dubai, The 2015 European Tour International Schedule presented 12 months of enthralling tournament action featuring 48 tournaments in 27 countries worldwide.
 

Gentlemen... start your engines