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The second event in the UAE is not a Rolex Series event, so the prize money is less and the top two-ranked players last week, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Cantlay, haven’t stayed on. Both finished outside the top-30. They weren’t needed for an exciting Sunday last week, so I doubt they will be missed this week. One PGA Tour regular to stay on is Bryson DeChambeau. He missed the cut last week, but he is the defending champion so there is more than appearance money to play for. The field is still of good quality, with 17 of the top-50 players in the World Rankings competing this week. All but DeChambeau are regulars on the European Tour, which shows the depth of European Tour golf in events such as this even if it cannot match the prize money Stateside. This event has been played since 1989 and has been staged at the Majlis course at Emirates Golf Club in all but two years of the event. That means that there is plenty of course form available this week. The course is not as long as last week, measuring 230 yards shorter, but there are more dog-legs on this course so course management is more of an issue than last week. However, it is still flat and exposed, a standard desert resort course, so there are far more similarities than differences with last week’s venue. It features generous fairways with little rough so the penalty for errant drives is principally the water that features on ten of the holes. That said, driving accuracy has never been a key factor here – Sergio Garcia ranked 4th in that category when winning three years ago, but no other winner in the last 20 years has ranked in the top-15 in driving accuracy that week. The greens are generally rather fast so their difficulty can be affected by the strength of the wind. The forecast is for calm, but the prospect of strong winds on Sunday (up to 22mph). That is still five days away so there is a wide margin of error on such forecasts at this stage, but the leading group will need plenty experience to cope with difficult conditions if the forecast is correct. Given the long history at this course, the following angles are easy to identify and should be profitable. Angles to consider: 1. Class prevails in Dubai This is an event often won by Major champions or champions-to-be: 14 of the 30 Dubai Desert Classics have been won by players who have now won a Major championship and in both 2016 (Danny Willett) and 2017 (Sergio Garcia), the winner of this event would win the Masters Tournament three months later. Beyond the Major champion angle, here are the World Rankings of the last five winners at the start of the event: 5th – 60th – 15th – 19th – 1st. In terms of the ranks of those players in the field, they were: 1st – 17th – 3rd – 4th – 1st. The outlier is clearly the 2018 winner, Hao-Tong Li, who was 110/1 pre-tournament, but he was closely followed by Rory McIlroy (2nd, World Ranking: 11th) and Tommy Fleetwood (3rd, World Ranking: 12th). 2. History matters Ignoring Li for now, winners here have always fared well previously on the course. DeChambeau (2019) had a top-20 finish in his only previous visit; Garcia (2017) had four top-20 finishes in his last five visits; Willett (2016) had top-15 finishes in the previous two years; McIlroy (2015) had top-10 finishes in each of his previous five visits including a win; Gallacher (2014, 2013) won back-to-back and had finished 10th in 2010 and 2nd in 2011; Cabrera-Bello (2012) had finished in the top-20 the year before; Quiros (2011) had finished 13th and 6th in the previous years; and Jimenez (2010) had four top-10 finishes in the five years beforehand. Returning to Li (2018), he had finished 39th in his previous visit, but 2nd-placed McIlroy had an excellent record on this course (outlined above) and 3rd-placed Fleetwood had already secured a top-10 finish here. 3. Greens in regulation is key this week This was also an angle last week and that shows the similarity between these courses. Last year’s winner, DeChambeau, ranked 3rd for greens in regulation, while the top-two in that category also finished in the top-3. Li led the field in the putting stats to win in 2018, but Garcia won in 2017 and was top-ranked in greens in regulation while four of the top-5 in greens in regulation comprised the top-4 places on the leaderboard. A similar story occurs in previous years, so with the (again) exception of 2018, strong greens in regulation stats generally lead to a high finish on the leaderboard in this event. Selections The above angles have been used to create a shortlist from which the following players have been selected. Martin Kaymer Kaymer is widely-tipped this week and not without reason. He recovered from a poor 2nd round to finish 8th last week to confirm the increased form that he has shown in recent months. He is a two-time Major Champion who led the European Tour in greens in regulation last season and has four top-5 finishes on this course. Even when his game has not been at the same level as it is currently, he has managed top-25 finishes in each of the last three years here. Sergio Garcia Another Major champion who finished inside the top-10 last week. He was ranked 4th in greens in regulation on the European Tour last year and when he won this event in 2017, he led the field in greens in regulation, as he did last year when finishing 3rd. It was only four European Tour starts ago that he won the KLM Open so his last four starts on this Tour read 1st-7th-6th-10th. That is very consistent and this is a course that suits him more than those previous four courses. Lee Westwood Completing a trio of experienced players who could cope with difficult conditions on Sunday if leading is last week’s winner. It is certainly unusual to back a player to win in consecutive weeks, but it is something that Westwood has done four times in his career, and that doesn’t include the run of finishing 1st-2nd-1st in three consecutive weeks in 1997. Admittedly, the last of his back-to-back wins was in 2011, but he followed up his win in the 2018 Nedbank Golf Challenge with a strong performance in the DP World Tour Championship (4th after 54 holes). His win last week puts him back inside the top-30 in the World Rankings. That is reward for his form that has seen him finish inside the top-10 in three of his last four events and he should also finish this week’s course to his liking: he has five top-10 finishes in the last nine years here. Tips 0-3; -6.00pts 1pts e.w. Martin Kaymer 33/1 (Skybet, Betway 1/5 1-2-3-4-5-6-7) 16th 1pt e.w. Sergio Garcia 20/1 (Skybet, Coral, Betway 1/5 1-2-3-4-5-6-7) 23rd 1pt e.w. Lee Westwood 33/1 (Unibet, 888sport 1/5 1-2-3-4-5-6) 50th
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