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Nov 19th, 2021

I don’t get the Race to Dubai

True tour champion or just more cash for the big boys?

Collin Morikawa is a clear favourite to win the Race to Dubai following this week’s DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. If he does so, he will have won after stepping on European soil on two occasions, the abrdn Scottish Open and The Open at Royal St George’s.
Collin Morikawa odds on to win the Race to Dubai

Morikawa has played in nine European Tour events winning two of them. However, those events were the four majors, three WGC events in the USA, the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, and the two UK events already mentioned.
Second place in the Race to Dubai is Billy Horschel, the impressive winner of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in September. However, Horschel has only played ten events and again, like Morikawa, six of them were on US soil.
Jon Rahm in third is a similar story, although he did pop over for a couple of events in Spain in October. Rahm has decided to sit out the DP World Tour Championship, suggesting that the 2019 money list winner no longer sees the European prize as that important.

You have to look to fifth place and Min Woo Lee to find what I’d consider a real European Tour player. Lee has played twenty events, fourteen of which were on European soil.
Rory McIlroy has ridden into town presumably on the back of a chunky appearance fee and may well take the spoils this week. He is another player who has rarely visited Europe playing in just three events: the Irish and Scottish Opens and The Open.
You may call me old fashioned but I’d like to see a player who plays pretty much full time on the European Tour winning the Race to Dubai title. The inclusion of the majors and the WGC events with their higher points weighting skews the standings and leads to the championship heading to a player often based on the PGA Tour.
Many on the European Tour do not qualify to play in the WGC events or the majors. So once again, the deck is stacked against them. We like to see the big guns in European events but do they deserve to take away the spoils?

TAGS: Race To Dubai, Collin Morikawa, Rory McIroy, 2021, Eds Letter