Before Earth, golfers ready to battle Fire

Before heading to Earth, Danny Willett and the rest of the field will be facing the Fire. It will be about battling the elements and treading into the unknown when the 2016 Masters champion and 107 other golfers tee off at the Jumeirah Golf Estates on Wednesday morning.

Normally, by this time, the field would have already wrapped up the DP World Tour Championship, the season-ending Race to Dubai tournament.

But this has been anything but a normal year, a strange year in fact, as the Covid-19 pandemic has taken centre stage. It left the whole world in tatters and counting the costs, not to mention, lives. The golfing world too took a massive hit, but on the flipside, the European Tour has quite admirably emerged from the ashes, so to speak, to put together a more than decent looking calendar of 38 tournaments.

And the 36th on that list is a brandnew event — the Golf in Dubai Championship — which plays out over the National Day holiday weekend.

The world’s top golfers have gotten used to the 7,708-yard Earth Course at the Jumeirah Golf Estates, home to the DP World Tour. But they will be left to tame a new course at the same venue when they go up against the 7,480-yard Fire Course for the Golf in Dubai Championship. And Willett, who slipped into the ‘Green Jacket’ after firing a five-under 67 to win the Masters by three strokes over American Jordan Spieth and fellow Englishman Lee Westwood, has had a brief feel of it while testing his driver.

“The only thing I’ve ever done on the Fire course was a bit of driver testing on the sixth hole and seventh. That’s the only thing I’ve seen of this course until today,” Willett said during a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

“There are not too many similarities, it’s a very different golf course to the Earth. We usually have very good scoring for the DP World Championship, but that’s because you’ve got a lot of the best players in the world playing. This week’s course is probably a bit easier, by a couple of shots but again that’s all weather dependent – wind dependent – and the forecast is really good, but if the wind picks up in the afternoon. That’s what you’ve got to look out for in Dubai,” he added.

And Dubai holds special memories for the 33-year-old Yorkshireman as he had won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic just a couple of months before his Masters triumph. Willett had also clinched the DP World Tour event two years ago.

So, it goes without saying that Willett is feeling good going into the weekend.

The seven-time European Tour winner is hoping to sign off what has been a turbulent year, on a good note, and come back stronger next year.

“The work I’ve put in hasn’t really been reflected in the results we’ve had, which is a real shame. Two more weeks, fingers crossed it would be nice to finish the year strong. I guess we put a bit of a line under 2020 like I’m sure most guys will and try to have a strong off season and come back really strong in 2021,” said Willett, who will tee off from the par-4 one with German Martin Kaymer and Belgian Thomas Pieters.

With the opening day coinciding with the UAE’s 49th National Day, the country’s No.1 golfer Ahmed Skaik has been given the honour of teeing off first.