Let’s rewind in time. Travel with us to February 12, 2012. Sunday. We are at the Emirates Golf Club, on hole 16 of the Majlis course. Rafa Cabrera Bello is the leader of the Desert Classic and hits a fright to the right from the tee. The ball ends up regular, surrounded by trees and with a shot that is not exactly short.
The Canarian pulls out a sensational iron 7, puts it through the gap that was there and puts it to the short left corner of the antegreen. He signs a fantastic approach and putt and saves a par that would ultimately be decisive in consummating his second victory on the European Tour.
Today, twelve years later, with that same drive from the tee, Rafa would never reach that area of trees and would have to hit a wood 5 second. This happy anecdote, because of his victory, serves us to explain how the Dubai route has been lengthened in just ten years and how world golf has evolved in terms of distance.
The simplest, but evident, conclusion is that Rafa in 2024 has a much harder time winning the Hero Dubai Desert Classic than twelve years ago. His distance from the tee has hardly changed, if anything it has increased a bit, between five and ten yards on average, but the Majlis course is much longer and the average hitting of the players has also grown exponentially.
Specifically, at the Emirates the holes 1, 3, 6, 9, 13 and 16 have been considerably lengthened since then. In total, the field has grown well over a hundred yards. In fact, on hole 16, returning to the anecdote that gave rise to this report, in 2012 most of the players were trying to cross over the dog leg left of the street, while right now practically no one tries it. It’s a direct shot to the street. “Maybe Rory McIlroy or Ryan Fox will try it, not many more,” Rafa explains to Ten Golf.
To the growth of the Majlis, we must add the increase in general hitting in world golf. We go back to 2012. Specifically, to the WGC Cadillac Invitational in Doral. That week, Rafa averages 283.5 yards from the tee and ranks 36th in distance in a tournament with 74 participants. That is, more or less, the Canarian was in the average of world golf. In fact, the average on the PGA Tour that year in distance from the tee is 289.1 yards, more or less the hitting of Cabrera Bello.
And now we jump to 2023, the last full season. We review the statistics of the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour (in 2012 these data were not collected in Europe). Rafa hit an average of 294.40 yards last season, that is, more than ten yards from what he hit in that WGC in Miami. It has grown. Not much, but it has grown. Well, with that average, the Canarian was ranked 140th on the DP World Tour in distance from the tee. 140 out of 179 players. Or what is the same, in the lower area of this section.
Another revealing fact. In that WGC in Doral eleven of the 74 participating players ended with an average hit above 300 yards, about 15 percent of the tournament. Meanwhile, last year on the DP World Tour a total of 103 players exceeded 300 yards, close to sixty percent of the circuit. It’s not that Rafa is hitting less, but that the rest are hitting more.
“Either you smarten up, or you become obsolete. More and more players are above the 300-yard average. The age of the Tour has dropped, it goes longer and the fields are also prepared for that hit,” explains Cabrera Bello to this medium. The final conclusion is that you have to renew or die. And that’s exactly what the golfer from Maspalomas is doing. “Lately I’ve been working more on the irons because I know that an improvement there will have a faster and significant impact on the results, but I’m also working on the distance to gain yards, otherwise you end up falling behind,” he says.
That Rafa is in a more difficult position to win this week than he was in 2012, does not mean that he does not have options for victory. Precisely, he is looking for and working on the resources for it. It is also a challenge, a challenge, with which Cabrera is delighted.
