Before he teed off in the final round of the DP World Tour season, Rory McIlroy had a conversation with Carmen Bot\u00edn, the former wife of Seve Ballesteros.<\/p>\n
Regardless of whether he won Sunday in Dubai or not, McIlroy was on track to break his tie with the late Ballesteros for second-most Race to Dubai titles.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe told me how proud he would have been,\u201d McIlroy recounted of Bot\u00edn\u2019s message.<\/p>\n
Hours later, McIlroy had locked up a fourth straight season-long crown \u2013 and seventh overall, one shy of Colin Montgomerie\u2019s record. But with one hole to play in the DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates, McIlroy found himself a couple shots back of clubhouse leader Matt Fitzpatrick, who had just polished off a second consecutive 6-under 66 to post 18 under in the twosome just ahead.<\/p>\n
McIlroy drove his tee ball onto the narrow right portion of the fairway, then flushed a 5-wood 234 yards to 15 feet before rolling in the eagle to force a playoff with Fitzpatrick.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn typical Rory fashion, he did it again,\u201d Fitzpatrick said.<\/p>\n
Only McIlroy\u2019s hero bid was short-lived, as he rinsed his tee shot on No. 18 in the playoff, setting up Fitzpatrick to win this event for the third time, first since 2020, with a short par.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick\u2019s victory capped a resurgent second half of the year for the 31-year-old Englishman, who didn\u2019t compete in the DP World Tour\u2019s two-event playoffs last year and went 10 tournaments to start this year before notching his first top-20 finish. But Fitzpatrick tied for eighth at the PGA Championship in May to jumpstart his year. He capped the PGA Tour regular season with four straight top-8s to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs, then he secured his Ryder Cup spot with three consecutive top-6s in Europe. His 2-1-1 showing at Bethpage, marked his best performance in four career Ryder Cups.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick began Sunday\u2019s final round a shot behind McIlroy and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen before carding six birdies, including a 50-footer on the par-3 fourth and 25-footer at the par-4 15th.<\/p>\n
\u201cStruggled at the start of this year, obviously, and to turn it around in the summer like I did and have a Ryder Cup like I did, Ryder Cup in particular, feel like it\u2019s hard to top given everything,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cBut the way that I played today, you know, I feel like I really didn\u2019t hit one bad shot all day. I\u2019m so proud of myself, the effort that everyone puts in behind the scenes. Yeah, what a feeling. What a feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy felt like he\u2019d gotten off to the \u201cperfect start,\u201d birdieing four of his first seven holes to take control of the tournament. But after a birdie on No. 11, he bogeyed Nos. 12 and 16 to fall behind Fitzpatrick.<\/p>\n
Neergaard-Petersen, a former standout at Oklahoma State, played his last five holes in 5 under to shoot 68 and tie for third at 17 under with Tommy Fleetwood (67), Laurie Canter (67) and Ludvig \u00c5berg (66). The Dane had an eagle try of his own at No. 18, from 18 feet, though he missed.<\/p>\n
\u201cLucky to see Rasmus\u2019s putt before mine,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cHis hung out a little bit before it started to turn, so got a read from him. It was a great way to finish, making the playoff. But unfortunately, I hit it in the water there on 18 in the playoff, just sort of put me behind the 8-ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut happy for Matt. He\u2019s had a great end of the season, played great to get on the Ryder Cup team, and then he sort of kept it going since.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy, of course, didn\u2019t leave Dubai empty-handed, his seventh Race to Dubai punctuating a year in which he completed the career Grand Slam at the Masters, won three other times and was an integral part of a sixth victorious European Ryder Cup team.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo equal [Ballesteros] last year was cool, but to surpass him this year, yeah, I didn\u2019t get this far in my dreams, so it\u2019s very cool,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
Now, he\u2019s got Monty in his sights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want it, of course I do,\u201d McIlroy said of the Race to Dubai record. \u201cI caught up with Monty this week when he was here a couple days ago. \u2026 Look, it seems within touching distance now. I\u2019d love to be the winningest European in terms of Order of Merits and season-long races.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, I\u2019ve probably got a few more good years left in me, and hopefully, I can catch him and surpass him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before he teed off in the final round of the DP World Tour season, Rory McIlroy had a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-288577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}