Dubai glory for Rory
IF someone had said to Rory McIlroy at the start of the season that the biggest prizes he would win all year would arguably be the DP World Tour Championship and the Race to Dubai, he would undoubtedly have turned his nose up at the prospect.
But context is everything in life and, by picking up these substantial titles at the end of an epic duel in the sun against Andy Sullivan yesterday, there was no disguising his delight.
It brought an emphatic end to a frustrating few months that began with the now infamous ankle ligament injury he picked up playing football with his mates in July, and allows him to go into an eight-week winter break with everything hunky dory in his golfing world once more.
It’s the third time he has won the Race to Dubai in the last four years and meant a payday of £2.1million, which should cover the cost of a few Christmas gifts.
As for his opponent, who played more like a rival in the making than a game underdog, the finest compliment that could be paid to Sully — as he is known to all and sundry — came from McIlroy himself.
‘Rarely have I ever had to dig deeper,’ said the four-time major champion after a stirring head to head that ebbed and flowed in classic fashion, with McIlroy eventually prevailing by one stroke after he followed his 65 on Saturday with a 66.
Some players are just born with the priceless gift of revelling in the heat of playing for titles in front of 20,000 enraptured fans and Sullivan is clearly one of those.
‘I don’t think it gets any better than that,’ he said, before coming up with a delicious rider. ‘Well, maybe one stroke better.’
Nobody gave him much hope playing alongside the man who has already built a Dubai dynasty, given the plethora of titles he has collected in this part of the world.
But Sullivan took dead aim at the pin at the first and never backed off for a moment. Two birdies for starters, and a McIlroy three-putt at the fourth, and suddenly his one-stroke overnight advantage had become three.
How would McIlroy respond? Well, how do three straight birdies sound? When Sullivan bogeyed the eighth they were all level again, with the Englishman looking likely to drop another stroke at the ninth before rescuing an unlikely par with a wonderful chip-in.
It’s far too early to make a direct comparison but there are definite shades of Ian Woosnam in the way Sullivan goes about his business.
If he keeps playing like this, he is just going to love the Ryder Cup. In the meantime, this runner-up finish will lift him into the world’s top 40 and secure a cherished Masters debut next April.
McIlroy birdied the 12th and then established a two-stroke lead with more birdies at the 14th and 15th. At the par-three 17th, he hit his worst shot of the week. ‘It was horrendous,’ he said after his longiron effort splashed into the water.
This was the moment he showed once more that he has the grit and guts to go with the talent.
After playing from the drop zone, he holed from 30ft for what he described as ‘the finest bogey of my career’.
It proved the difference, with both men making pars at the last.
The rising talent was afforded a reception as loud as the resident superstar, who lives for two months each year in Dubai.
In the golf-writing fraternity, we keep harping on about the amount of talented young Brits on tour but it’s hard not to given that they deliver practically every week.
Danny Willett was McIlroy’s nearest pursuer in the Race to Dubai and signed off his magnificent breakthrough season with a valiant fourth-place finish.
‘I guess if someone had said you’re going to finish fourth and see where that gets you, you might have taken it,’ said Willett.
‘Unfortunately, we are going to come up shy by one on the Race to Dubai but hopefully next year we’re in a similar position.’
Matt Fitzpatrick finished on the same score to notch a scarcely believable tenth top 10 in his rookie year at the age of just 21.