The DP World Tour concludes this week in Mauritius, marking its 54th calendar year since its debut back in 1972. The final battle before the Christmas break will be the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open, a tournament that has been the closing bell since 2022. Obviously, each year there has been a tournament that was the last. For a long time, that spotlight fell on the Volvo Masters (1988-1998), in Portugal it wrapped up between 1982 and 1987, and the South African Open was a classic between 2005 and 2010, as were others like the Alfred Dunhill Championship, Joburg Open, Hong Kong Open, or the Lancome Trophy, to name just a few examples. Important distinction: we are referring to the last tournament of the calendar year, not the last of the season.
Considering that the AfrAsia starting tomorrow will close 2025, it’s a good moment to review what has happened throughout the history of the DP World Tour in the last tournaments of the year. How has Spain fared, for example? The answer is reasonably well. The Armada has won the last event of the European circuit three times before the New Year’s Eve grape feast. The first was precisely the inaugural one, back in 1972. The tournament that closed the calendar was the Lancia D’Oro Open Tournament in Italy, played from 19 to 22 October (those were different times) and the champion was José María Cañizares.
A long wait ensued for the second Spanish victory in the last tournament of the year on the European Circuit. Specifically, until 2001. We had to change centuries. The tournament was the Hong Kong Open and the winner was José María Olazábal. It was played from 29 November to 2 December and belonged to the 2002 season.
Our last pre-Christmas victory occurred just ten years after Olazábal’s mentioned win. It was a grand farewell. Álvaro Quirós triumphed in the Dubai Finale from 8 to 11 December. Interestingly, only twice has the Dubai Finale been both the season and year-end finale. One was in 2011 with Quirós as champion and the other was in 2020, with the pandemic in the mix, with Matthew Fitzpatrick winning.
Thus, in 53 years, we have had three Spanish victories, and 14 years have passed since the last one. Who knows if the fourth will come in Mauritius. We hope so. There are eight contenders for the challenge: Ángel Ayora, Eugenio Chacarra, Rocco Repetto, Sebas García, Quim Vidal, Manu Elvira, Iván Cantero, and Adri Arnaus.
The country that has won the last tournament of the year the most times is South Africa, with 12 victories, largely because in recent years that final event has often been played there. Next are England and Australia with 7 victories, Scotland with 6, and the United States with 5. Tiger Woods has been one of the players to achieve victory in the last tournament of the year on the European circuit. Other big names include Gary Player, Colin Montgomerie, and Bernhard Langer.
Surely, the most curious thing about this statistic is that Seve Ballesteros, the most prolific winner in the history of the European Tour with 50 victories, never won the last tournament of the year. It must be one of the few things, if not the only one, that the Cantabrian genius hasn’t done in European golf.
Spain has hosted this last tournament 12 times. The first was in 1974 with El Paraíso Open, which ended with the victory of Peter Oostherhuis. The other 11, of course, were with the Volvo Masters, between 1988 and 1998.
