BlogAbu Dhabi Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

A very important next three weeks for the European Tour it’s the desert swing, three weeks in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.  First this week is the Abu Dhabi Championship which is being held in one of the fastest growing cities in the world.  It also has a pretty good field and is being played on a good course.  The importance of this event is to get the European Tour off to a great start and the next couple of weeks will have marquee names along with the best players in the world.

Unfortunately the tournament got a big blow on Monday when Rory McIlroy had to withdraw because of a rib injury.  It seemed that on Friday morning McIlroy woke up with a painful back.  He took anti-inflammatory drugs to control the pain and taped up the area and played over the weekend realizing that the injury wasn’t a serious back problem.  He lost a playoff to Graeme Storm and hoped on a plane for Dubai for an MRI.  McIlroy underwent a scan on Monday morning and was diagnosed with a stress fracture to a rib. No timetable has been given for his return, hopefully he will be able to play in Dubai in two weeks.

Despite the loss of McIlroy, the field is good with three of last year’s major championship winners Danny Willett, Dustin Johnson and Henrik Stenson. The field also has two former world number ones, Martin Kaymer and Lee Westwood, along with defending champion Rickie Fowler.  The field also boasts seven Major Champions, 80 European Tour winners, four European Tour Number Ones and two World Number Ones.

Still you wonder if the luster of the desert swing isn’t wearing out when you realize that top players off the Race to Dubai race like Brandon Stone and Richard Sterne took a pass, but how about European standouts Francesco Molinari and Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano taking a pass to play in the CareerBuilder instead.  A show of the times on the European Tour.

Course Information – Abu Dhabi Golf Club

Part of a 27-hole club that was built and opened in 1998.  The course was designed by Peter Harradine. The course was carved straight out of the desert and requires about a half a million gallons of water a day to keep in shape.  The holes weaves through undulating terrain that features pockets of palms, ornamental trees and shrubs, as well as seven spectacular saltwater lakes. The course provides a tough but fair challenge, with lush fairways, water coming in play on 11 holes, 90 strategically placed bunkers and big greens which are Bermuda Tifdwarf.  Fairways are paspalum while the rough is Rye.

Since the course was first used 11 years ago, several changes are made each year with new tees adding more distance, bunkers have been changed and greens changed to add more challenging pin positions.  For this year the players will find a few new strategically positioned bunkers and a new 18th tee, which has been elevated to the left of the old tee and gives a new and more challenging perspective to the closing par five.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the Abu Dhabi G.C.:

Key stat for the winner:

• In looking at the stats of the winners the last six years, what sticks out as very important is hitting lot’s of greens.  Kaymer was T-1st in that stat in 2011 and every winner since 2009 except for Kaymer in 2010 and Pablo Larrazabal in 2015 finished in the top-12 in that category.  Last year Rickie Fowler was T-10th.
• Also important to look for length, since this is a desert course and will play firm, players that hit it far will have an advantage along with guys that play well in the desert.

Here are some more key stats to look to for this week:

• Interesting to see how well all of the champions since 2009 has done on the par 3s.  2015 champion Pablo Larrazabal was 7 under on them, all of the winners since 2009 have played them under par.  Unfortunately last year’s winner Rickie Fowler broke the streak playing the par 3s in one over.
• Length is always important as those in contention are high up in driving distance.  In looking at someone that has done well in that stat, Rory McIlroy got better each year in distance and finish as he was T5th in 2009, 3rd in 2010 and 2nd in 2011 and ’12..
• In the 11 years the tournament has been played only once has the champion shot over par.  That was Martin Kaymer in the final round of 2008 when he shot 74, but the wind was gusting up to 45 mph that day.
• It’s very unique to think that in the eleven year history of this event Paul Casey has won it twice and Martin Kaymer won it three times, horses for courses.  Unfortunately Casey hasn’t played in this event since 2014.
• Guess what the weather is going to be?  Easy, it’s going to be perfect with tempertures in the mid to high 70s and no rain.  Wind will be low, the worst day is Sunday with winds of 11 mph.
• One last thing, it’s easy to say that Dustin Johnson will win.  His driver will give him a big advantage as he can overpower the course.  But a case in point, yes Johnson has won in places like China at the WGC-HSBC Champions, but this is his first visit to the area and who knows what will happen.  His game wasn’t sharp at Kapalua and with all of the travel and possible jet-lag, I would not rate Johnson a lock.  Also look at some of the champions in this event, guys like Gary Stal, Pablo Larrazabal and Robert Rock were not consider “favorites” in the years they won so the point is don’t be surprised if the winner isn’t a marquee name.
• But look at the last four winners, nobody would of predicted either last year’s winner Gary Stall, 2014 winner Pablo Larrazabal or 2012 winner Robert Rock.  Look at guys like Graeme Storm, who won last week in South Africa, or guys like Jordan L. Smith who was 3rd, Dean Burmester who finished 4th or David Drysdale who was T-5th to have just as much chance of winning as Johnson, Rickie and Henrik.
• Also talking about jet-lag how about Brandan Grace getting world traveler of the month award.  At the beginning of the year Grace and his new wife Nieke made the 12,000 mile trek from South Africa to Maui.  The flight time was over 28 hours and it took four different planes to get there.  After finishing on Sunday night the Grace’s boarded a plane in Honolulu for the 28 hour trek to Abu Dhabi, arriving sometime Tuesday afternoon.  He won’t have to travel far in the coming weeks, he is playing down the road in Qatar and then Dubai, so he won’t have far to travel.  After all this travel, Grace won’t be high up on my picks for this week.