A FEW years ago the European Tour’s social media team latched onto the Mannequin Challenge in some style, creating a single camera pan film unrivalled in scale until the release, earlier this year, of 1917. However, whilst hanging around doing nothing was a fun diversion in 2016, the extended and unplanned three-month version earlier this year prompted no smiles and threatened the very existence of the circuit.
Chapeau, therefore, to all concerned with first creating the summer UK Swing from scratch and then adding more worldwide events to create a patchwork quilt of a season that culminates at this week’s DP World Tour Championship. First played in 2009, the tournament has always produced a top class champion and, fresh from this column picking Dustin Johnson at Augusta, let’s try to end 2020 on a high with another winner.
Enhanced Winner – Patrick Reed 8/1
The Greg Norman-designed Earth Course at Jumeirah has called upon hard nuts to crack it through the first eleven editions. There have been three two-time winners so eight champions in all and seven have been good enough to have performed in the Ryder Cup. Moreover, in another hint that this is an examination for high quality players, ten of eleven times the winner had already finished T11th or better in a major championship. The winners also tend to have recently reminded everyone of their stamp of class: all eleven had landed a top 30 finish in one of the majors in the year of their win and only one of the eleven winners had not won or lost a play-off that season.
A man who fits all these criteria is Captain America Patrick Reed and he’s also a runner-up on the course so he fully understands the test ahead. His 2020 started in style with second place at the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions, swiftly followed by victory in the WGC Mexico Championship, but he’ll be a little frustrated that he blew a good lead in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. He followed it with third at Wentworth and he was tenth last time out in the Masters, just his second top 20 finish at Augusta National, and he arrives in Dubai eyeing not only victory in the tournament, but also number one ranking in the Race to Dubai. He’s the favourite this week, but for good reasons.
Each Way – Tommy Fleetwood 12/1
Like Reed, Englishman Tommy Fleetwood fits the profile of winners here and he came pretty close to adding his name to the honours board last year when finishing one shot behind the winner Jon Rahm. This year, as last, he starts the week lying second in the Race to Dubai, but his position permits him to be a little more aggressive because he can hunt the win rather than protect a position, which is what happened 12 months ago when start-of-the-week top man Bernd Wiesberger quickly fell out of the running.
Fleetwood lacks Reed’s major triumph, but has runner-up finishes in both the U.S. Open and the Open, he’s landed two top 30 finishes in the majors this season, was defeated in a play-off at the Scottish Open and, in addition to his course pedigree, he is a proven performer in the Middle East, another common thread among winners of the tournament. In Fleetwood’s case, he’s a two-time winner of the Abu Dhabi Championship and was also second there earlier this year.
First Round Leader Each Way – Joachim B Hansen 70/1
The one quality the 30-year-old J.B. Hansen never lacked was the ability to go low. Back in 2012 he introduced himself to the Challenge Tour with two laps of 62, one of them in the season-concluding Grand Final, and for the next eight years he’d throw in plenty of reminders of his pin-hunting skills whilst also showing a rather less welcome capacity to throw in plenty of double bogeys.
Late last season, however, he secured his card with a two month spell of low scoring and he went one better as this season neared its end, first threatening to win at Wentworth and then earning his maiden victory at European Tour-level in the Joburg Open. He’s carded a 64 in each of his last three starts and he can ride that wave into Thursday. With the exception of Danny Willett two years ago, finding a big priced winner of this tournament has proved difficult, so let’s try to so over just the first 18 holes with the Dane.
