{"id":240097,"date":"2026-01-18T21:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T21:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/240097\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T21:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T21:08:12","slug":"dp-world-tour-daniel-hillier-finishes-second-at-dubai-invitational-nacho-elvira-wins-after-shane-lowrys-last-hole-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/240097\/","title":{"rendered":"DP World Tour: Daniel Hillier finishes second at Dubai Invitational, Nacho Elvira wins after Shane Lowry\u2019s last hole meltdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spaniard, who had struggled early in the round, duly parred the hole for an unexpected but nonetheless welcome and important victory.<\/p>\n

Elvira told Sky Sports: \u201cIt means the world. If you had told me on Tuesday that I was going to be winning this I would never have believed you. It is a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elvira finished on a 10-under par total of 274, one shot in front of New Zealander Hillier who carded a 65 and takes home $521,149 (\u20ac258,404). Fellow Kiwi Ryan Fox finished in a share of 27th after an even par 71 saw him end the tournament at two-over.<\/p>\n

After missing the PGA Tour by two spots last year<\/a>, Hillier retained his form to jump to fifth on the standings with the six-under round. Starting the day at three-under, Hillier had birdies at the second and third holes to move to five-under through the front nine. He then made his move on the back nine first with a birdie at the par five 10th followed by an eagle at the 13th, also a par five.<\/p>\n

Another birdie at the 15th lifted Hillier a share of the lead with Rory McIlroy and Elvira but long birdie looks on the final three holes didn\u2019t drop as he had to wait out the final round contenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, at the start of the week I was chatting with Foxy, and we had a couple of nine-hole matches and he said, \u2018Why can\u2019t you be like this when you\u2019re playing in a tournament?\u2019,\u201d Hillier said after this final round.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust pretend I was playing a little nine-hole match against the golf course, and basically taking it one shot at a time. For the most part, happy days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowry ended a further shot back from Hillier in a tie for third with three more players, including McIlroy.<\/p>\n

McIlroy, who started the final round three shots off the lead, forced his way into contention as Elvira faltered, and briefly held a share of an increasingly crowded leaderboard.<\/p>\n

Lowry, bidding for his first DP World Tour title since the 2022 BMW PGA Championship, looked to have made the decisive move with a 25-foot birdie on the 15th to move to the top of the leaderboard.<\/p>\n

And when McIlroy pulled his birdie chance wide on the 17th, he set up a golden opportunity for his close friend.<\/p>\n

But moments after Lowry had powered his second shot on the 18th into the water, Elvira birdied the 17th to seize control.<\/p>\n

Hillier\u2019s six-under-par final round of 65 had him hoping for at least a playoff, but Elvira, who had seen his overnight lead wiped out after successive early bogeys, held firm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spaniard, who had struggled early in the round, duly parred the hole for an unexpected but nonetheless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,1975,18829,91582,4225,51148,5904,18984,33035,22220,16773,18830,22528,139153,685,141371,1362,15311,141370,111,139,69,18833,6926,8466,7228,213,4497,208,6202,377],"class_list":["post-240097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-at","tag-daniel","tag-dp","tag-dubai","tag-elvira","tag-final","tag-finish","tag-finishes","tag-going","tag-great","tag-hillier","tag-hole","tag-invitational","tag-last","tag-lowrys","tag-made","tag-meltdown","tag-nacho","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-round","tag-season","tag-second","tag-shane","tag-sports","tag-start","tag-tour","tag-wins","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}