6 days ago
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Rory McIlroy won a marathon and lost a sprint during a 30-minute spell of brilliant madness that culminated with Matt Fitzpatrick leaving the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai with the title.
The shortest route to explaining such an outcome would also be the most boring – Fitzpatrick beat his Ryder Cup team-mate on a play-off to win this tournament for a third time and with it a cheque for £2.3million.
Nice work if you can get it, and no doubt a bittersweet occasion for McIlroy, given he collected a seventh Race to Dubai crown but fell short of a fifth individual victory in his astonishing season.
That covers the gist of what played out at the Earth Course. But the real thrills lived in the detail, which is to say the final hole of regulation play, when Fitzpatrick got up and down for a birdie and moved to 18 under par with a round of 66. Having contended without leading for the majority of the week, he suddenly had a two-stroke advantage at the top of the board.
But then McIlroy, one group behind, stepped onto the 18th, a long par five, and found the green in two. Needing to hole a 15-footer to force play-off, he erupted into one of those fist-pumping dances when the ball disappeared beneath ground.
As with the Irish Open in September, he had saved his day with an eagle on the 72nd hole; unlike that day, he didn’t convert the opportunity when the play-off then came into force.
Rory McIlroy claimeda remarkable seventh Race to Dubai title, putting him only one behind Colin Montgomerie's record
McIlroy was beaten in a play-off at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai by his Ryder Cup team-mate Matt Fitzpatrick
After watching Fitzpatrick drive into the left-hand rough, McIlroy sent his own into the stream that snakes a path up the fairway and from there he put his third into sand.
Fitzpatrick, whose season veered from lost cause to Ryder Cup hero via a brilliant summer of recovery and all manner of changes to his coaching and caddie set-up, was able to seal his 11th professional win with a par.
‘It means the world,’ said the 31-year-old. ‘I struggled at the start of the year obviously and to turn it round in the summer like I did, and have the Ryder Cup like I did, is hard to top. But the way I played today...there was one bad shot all day. So proud of myself. What a feeling.
‘I'd not been hitting it amazing all week but kind of hit it well yesterday and really well today. In the middle of the round nothing was going my way but I managed to roll a couple in late and get into position.’
The late run he referenced was the clutch run of three birdies in the final five holes, capitalising on the inertia that befell McIlroy on the back nine. The world No 2 had started like a train, gaining five shots in five holes to pull away from Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, with whom he shared the overnight lead.
The Race to Dubai crown tops a brilliant year for McIlroy in which he finally completed the career Grand Slam
But then he slowed, with bogeys on the 12th and 16th and mere pars on the scoreable holes at 14 and 15.
McIlroy’s consolation is sizeable – a seventh Race to Dubai crown pulled him clear of Seve Ballesteros in the all-time standings and just one shy of Colin Montgomerie’s record.
McIlroy said: ‘To surpass Seve this year, I did not get this far in my dreams.
‘Now I want it (Montgomerie’s record). Of course I do. I caught up with Monty a couple of days ago and look it seems within touching distance now. I was the first European to win the Grand Slam and I would love to be the European with the most wins in terms of the Order of Merit and season-long races.
'I have hopefully got a few more good years left in me and hopefully I can catch him and surpass him.’
