Rose hopes to bloom
dubai — A week-long rest and excited Justin Rose is fresh and ready to go for his third successive win on the European Tour when he pairs with fellow challenger Tommy Fleetwood on Thursday at The Earth course.
Rose trails Fleetwood by 256,737 points and needs to finish top five to have any chance of overtaking him. He can even win if he finishes outright second — and Fleetwood, who ended up in tenth place in the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, fails to win.
However, Rose’s target is to win the European Tour title that he won first time in 2007. “But (at the) end of the day, for me it’s about — to win The Race to Dubai, I have to contend in this tournament one way or another. I need to finish towards the top end of the leaderboard, and if you’re going to finish at the top end of the leaderboard, you may as well focus on trying to win the tournament,” the English golfer told media on the eve of the DP World Tour Championship, which starts on Thursday.
“We’ll see. Last week was an important week. Did what I wanted to do, spent time with the family. Did some practice, saw my coach, yeah, ticked all the boxes that I wanted to last week, and I’ve arrived here in Dubai, fresh, ready to go, excited.”
Although coming on the back of two back-to-back wins in China and Turkey, he concedes that no one can guarantee a good week. “You can never force a good week but the recipe is in place to continue doing what I’ve done the last few weeks,” he said optimistically.
He equated his situation this year to his Order of Merit triumph a decade ago. “It’s actually a very similar situation. I think mathematically, Valderrama in 2007, I could have maybe finished second or third, but went ahead and won the tournament. It’s probably something fairly similar this week,” he reckons.
The 37-year-old golfer is realistic about the prospects over four rounds from Thursday to Sunday. “The objective it quite simple and quite clear from that point of view but, like I said, it’s Wednesday, it’s too early to think about winning. Thursday is too early to think about winning. Friday is too early to think about winning,” he said rather matter-of-factly. “So it’s just about putting myself in (a) position, and then getting it done when you have that chance,” he added.
sunilvaidya@khaleejtimes.com