Reed could take Dubai title after field loses star power
The 2020 European Tour comes to a conclusion this week with the DP World Tour Championship as the final event on the tour’s Race to Dubai.
The field takes a big hit at the top this week with Jon Rahm, the World No. 2 and defending event and Race to Dubai winner, and World No. 4 Rory McIlroy, two-time Dubai winner, electing to shut it down and not play.
Several other event qualifiers, including Louis Oosthuizen, Lucas Herbert, Paul Casey and Shane Lowry, are also not participating.
Nevertheless, we do have plenty of top players teeing it up in Dubai, including six of the OWGR top-20 players. Patrick Reed (9/1) has traveled to Europe to play the DP World Tour Championship in four of the last five years and finished runner-up to Danny Willett (50/1) two years ago.
Tyrrell Hatton (12/1) has won an event on both sides of the pond in 2020 and has three top 10s in six appearances here. Tommy Fleetwood was runner-up last year to Rahm and shares a 14/1 price with Viktor Hovland, who made birdie on the 72nd hole Sunday to win the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico, and PGA Champion Collin Morikawa, who is the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 7 and makes his first overseas appearance of 2020.
Matthew Fitzpatrick (16/1) won this event in 2016. Sungjae Im (18/1) primarily plays on the PGA Tour, but he rarely takes an event off and has still managed to play 28 weeks in 2020 even with COVID-19 taking away three months of professional touring golf. Christiaan Bezuidenhout (20/1) has won back-to-back events in his native South Africa and comes into this week in better form than any player in the field.
Some other possible contenders: Matt Wallace (25/1) finished tied for second last week on the Fire Course at Jumeriah Golf Estates for the Golf in Dubai Championship. He also has had success on the Earth Course with a runner-up finish two years ago.
He is also consistently good with the putter, ranking 11th in Putts per GIR on the European Tour this season.
Bernd Wiesberger (25/1) finished eighth in last week’s event after a slow start with a first round of 70 (nine shots back of then-leader Andy Sullivan’s 61).
He also finished a respectable fourth at the RSM Classic three weeks ago, week after the Masters. His strong tee-togreen game (seventh on the European Tour - +1.25 strokes gained per round) should make him a contender here.
Robert MacIntyre (31/1) earned his first European Tour victory several weeks ago at the Cyprus Showdown.
He is absolutely striping and flushing it right now as evident by ranking 13th, second, first and second in the field for Strokes Gained: Off-The-Tee in his last four starts as well as rating first, second, 25th and 10th in the field for Strokes Gained: Tee-To-Green in that same span.
Dean Burmester (80/1) comes in off a fourth in his native South Africa last weekend. He also has two fourth-place finishes on this very course in 2017 and 2018.
The Earth Course is a big track and distance is never not beneficial, and Burmester ranks second in Driving Distance (329.8 yards) on the European Tour. He also ranks second on tour for Strokes Gained: Putting (+1.30 strokes gained per round).