– It wasn’t the final round that Alex del Rey had envisioned. It’s obvious that we’re not discovering anything new, but his scorecard of 77 strokes this Sunday in the last round of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, his worst record in four months, has stung. However, without drama, without anguish, and without loss of composure. Finishing in 38th place after starting tenth has been a blow, of course, but he has taken it with serenity. It’s time to recover, learn and come back stronger. If anyone knows how to do it, it’s him, who got the DP World Tour card through the School just four days after getting the disappointment of his life in the Final of the Challenge Tour.
It’s very easy to make the following reading: first Rolex Series of his career, he goes out on Sunday with chances to win, or at least to do something very big, and he plays with a first class like Adam Scott. It was also the first time. Many things to digest in a very short time. If we add to all this a rough start to the round (six over in seven holes), the matter gets much more complicated. Del Rey assures that he was not nervous, but he admits that he tried to force more than necessary to subtract strokes after the bad start. It’s not a good recipe on this course. If you go for the Majlis course, it’s normal for it to catch you, especially this Sunday, with spicy flags, hard and very fast greens and the wind making itself felt.
The bad start was a matter of details. He missed a very short putt on the 1st for par, tried to do more than necessary on the approach of hole 2 from the right of the green and ended up in the bunker and his second shot on hole 3 was a meter and a half short of being exceptional and leaving an eagle option. From there, he forced the machine to recover and the course did not let him. “Something similar happened to me in the third round of the Open de España in Madrid. I was not nervous or anything, but I started badly, forced a little more to subtract and I got more bogeys”, he told Ten Golf. At least, he finished with two birdies to take away a bit of the bad taste.
Be that as it may, there are many more positives than negatives this week. He knows it. He will learn from today as he always does and will continue to improve. The game is there. For now, January is not over yet and he already has practically half of the card secured. It’s not a small thing, although for him it’s not enough. By the way, good vibes with Scott, even though they didn’t talk much. He told him a scoop. In the next few days, the Australian is going to test the Srixon irons.
– Santi Tarrio has straightened out the bad start to the season he had in South Africa. He finished eleventh in Mauritius and has been top 25 in Dubai. He has not played over par all week, a very serious matter considering that only four players have made four rounds under par (McIlroy, Meronk, Scott and Shinkwin). It’s true that his finish has left a bad taste in his mouth. Double bogey at 18. With his usual humour, he described the outcome like this: “I hit a toad on the third shot and started throwing bills into the lake”, referring to the money he missed out on with this double bogey. Since he always manages to take it with irony and humour, we put the figure. If he had made par at 18, Tarrio would have finished tied for sixteenth and would have won an additional 23,158.32 euros. In any case, the season is launched for the Galician after a very solid week, with only nine bogeys in 72 holes.
– Pablo Larrazábal can win the International Swing. He occupies the fifth place in this mini ranking and there are six tournaments left to play, until the second one in South Africa, second weekend of March. The good news is that of the four he has ahead only Thriston Lawrence is going to play tournaments of this mini tour. The other three are going to the United States: McIlroy, Meronk and Fleetwood. The bad news is that McIlroy is almost 850 points ahead, so to surpass him it would not be enough, for example, to win a tournament and finish second in another… Heavy. The winner of the International Swing gets a bonus of 200,000 euros.
– By the way, if you see that the numbers that Rory McIlroy adds up in the Race to Dubai and in the International Swing do not match despite the fact that he has played the two Dubai tournaments valid for both classifications, do not go crazy. The reason is that the Rolex Series, for the purposes only of the swings that have debuted this year in the DP World Tour, reduce their points purse to 5,000 instead of the 8,000 they have for the Race to Dubai.
– One more fact about the Race to Dubai. With what Rory has added in the two Dubai tournaments, he already has the 2024 Dubai Final secured. Moreover, if we take last year’s classification, he would have finished in 30th place.
– Speaking of Rory. The Northern Irishman has made some curious historical jumps in time in his post-victory press conference. He went back to 2006, the first time he played here as an amateur. “It’s funny because I missed the cut and they gave me a press pass to go inside the ropes over the weekend. I remember seeing Thomas Bjorn, Ernie Els and Tiger Woods. Today, 18 years later, Thomas is my Ryder captain (they speak in the present of all the captains they have had), I bought a house from Els and I have a very good relationship with Tiger. For me, legacy is everything. There is no better way to measure success than to look at the base of this trophy and see my name next to theirs and other great champions”.
