In doing so, he broke a tie with Severiano Ballesteros in the all-time European order of merit charts and is one behind Colin Montgomerie, who achieved the feat eight times. <\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763321169_134_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems within touching distance now,\u201d said McIlroy. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was the first European to win the Grand Slam and I\u2019d love to be the most successful European in terms of winning Order of Merits and season-long races.\u201d <\/p>\n
When speaking after the event, McIlroy was cleary emotional and held back tears, admitting Ballesteros \u201cwas always my dad\u2019s favourite player\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I hear Seve, it just sort of brings me back through my whole journey in the game, and yeah, it\u2019s quite emotional,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Sky Sports, McIlroy also admitted he had an emotional conversation with Ballesteros\u2019 family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a chat with Seve\u2019s wife, Carmen, before I went out to play today, and she told me how proud he would have been,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
Matt Fitzpatrick of England and Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland embrace.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cSeve means so much to this Tour and to the European Ryder Cup team. We rally so much around his spirit and everything he meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was my dad\u2019s favourite player and whenever I hear his name I choke up. So to equal him last year was great but to surpass him this time \u2026 well, I didn\u2019t get this far in my dreams. It\u2019s very, very very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Englishman Fitzpatrick made a birdie on the 72nd hole of regulation play to finish with a 66 at the Earth course of Jumeirah Golf Estates.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Northern Ireland\u2019s McIlroy sensationally eagled the same hole after a brilliant second shot to 16 feet. <\/p>\n
On the first playoff hole, McIlroy\u2019s drive found the stream that crosses the fairway, and could only make a bogey, leaving Fitzpatrick a third-time winner of the season-ending tournament. <\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick, the 2022 US Open champion, kept his nerve for his third DP World Tour Championship title and a 10th DP World Tour victory in 195 starts. <\/p>\n
Until he finished tied eighth in the PGA Championship in May, he did not have a top-10 for nearly 11 months. <\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick wins DP World Tour Champ | 01:45<\/p>\n
England\u2019s Tommy Fleetwood (67) and Laurie Canter (67), Sweden\u2019s Ludvig Aberg (66) and Denmark\u2019s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen (68) – tied for third at 17-under par total. <\/p>\n
McIlroy, the reigning Masters champion seemed to be motoring along when he made five birdies in his first 11 holes to move ahead by two shots. <\/p>\n
A bogey on the 12th hole, where he overshot the green with his approach shot, and another dropped shot on the par-4 16th, where he found a bunker, pulled him back. <\/p>\n
After McIlroy\u2019s long birdie putt lipped out on the 17th, he was one behind a group of four players. <\/p>\n
That became a two-shot deficit when Fitzpatrick made the sixth birdie of his bogey-free round on the 18th. <\/p>\n
McIlroy responded with a towering second shot from 234 yards into head wind to 16 feet for his eagle to force the playoff.<\/p>\n
England\u2019s Marco Penge finished in a tie for 22nd to secure second place in the Race to Dubai.<\/p>\n
He led 10 non-exempt players who will get their PGA Tour card for 2026. <\/p>\n
That list includes Canter, Kristoffer Reitan, Adrien Saddier, Alex Noren, John Parry, Haotong Li, Keita Nakajima, Neergaard-Petersen and Jordan Smith. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy lost the week-long $10 million DP World Tour Championship on Sunday in a playoff against Matt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-294996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}