Everything will be so familiar to Rory McIlroy: the course, the stakes, the pressure.
For Eugenio Chacarra, it’s all new territory.
The 2026 golf season on the European tour reaches its climax this week with a traditional trip to the Earth course at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai for the 50 leading players on the points list.
So much is still up for grabs: a $3 million check for winning the year-end tournament; the season-long Race to Dubai title; and, for 10 players, a career-changing ticket to the PGA Tour.
Chacarra, McIlroy and Reed vie for title. Maybe Rahm, too
Most excitement surrounds the fight to be crowned the year’s No. 1 player on the European tour, a contest — once called the Order of Merit but now labeled the Race to Dubai — that McIlroy has dominated for the past 15 years.
He is involved again this season, with McIlroy sitting second in the standings behind Chacarra and knowing a fourth career victory at the World Tour Championship will see him win the season-long prize for an eighth time, tying the record with Colin Montgomerie. McIlroy has won it the last four years, too.
Chacarra, a 26-year-old Spaniard in his first full season on the tour, leads McIlroy by nearly 534 points. American player Patrick Reed is third, a further 181 points back and the last of the top title contenders.
Some 2,000 points are on offer for the winner at Jumeirah Golf Estates, with 1,335 for second place, 752 for third place, 600 for fourth, and 509 for fifth.
The only way for Chacarra to guarantee finishing in first place is to win. For the Spaniard, it seems to be a direct fight between him and McIlroy.
“He’s the No. 2 player in the world and the No. 1 in Europe,” Chacarra said of the most recent player to complete the career Grand Slam in golf. “And he’s been doing it for a long time and he plays really good out in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. He has played that course a million times, and I only played it once.
“Obviously,” said Chacarra, a three-time title winner this season, “the odds are on him and he’s the favorite. But we’ll play golf. We know what I’m capable of when I am playing good.”
Finishing third at the Abu Dhabi Championship last week lifted McIlroy above Reed in the Race to Dubai standings and means he'll be with Chacarra in the final pairing setting out in Thursday's first round.
“That’s where I wanted to be,” McIlroy said. “It’s a pretty familiar spot for me going into the DP World Tour Championship and I’m excited for it.”
Reed's two wins this season came at the Dubai Desert Classic in January and the Qatar Masters in February. His form has dipped in recent weeks since an injury-prompted withdrawal midway through the BMW PGA Championship in September, with his last three results being a missed cut in Spain, a T23 in India, and a T43 out of 70 players in Abu Dhabi last week.
Some players below the top three have a slim chance of winning the Race to Dubai, but they need to win and for Chacarra and McIlroy to finish way down the leaderboard.
One of them is Rahm, whose victory in Abu Dhabi on Sunday lifted him to sixth place — around 1,700 points behind Chacarra.
“Actually gives me a little extra incentive,” Rahm said. “I really didn’t think I was going to have a chance.”
PGA Tour cards on offer
Whatever happens this week, Chacarra and Reed have secured one of the 10 places on next season's PGA Tour available to European tour members who are not otherwise exempt.
Making up the current 10 are Casey Jarvis, Jayden Schaper, Daniel Hillier, Jakob Skov Olesen, Bernd Wiesberger, Andy Sullivan, Oliver Lindell and Joe Dean.
Lindell and Dean, Nos. 9 and 10 in the non-exempt list, are most vulnerable heading to Dubai.
___
