BlogOmega Dubai Desert Classic Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

* A great win for Sergio Garcia shooting a final round 65, the best of the day then beating Mikko Ilonen in a playoff to win the Commercialbank Qatar Masters.  For Garcia who won the Thailand Golf Championship in December it’s gives us reason to believe that the kid has finally grown up at 34.  He is one of these hidden talents that we have admired for close to 16 years now that never really achieved what many thought he would.  Who knows if it’s because he came so close in the era in which Tiger Woods dominated, but Sergio is better than his record shows.  Garcia is a nature shotmaker but has two problems, his putting sometimes is suspect and he rarely makes that great putt when he needs it the most.  Another problem is between the ears, Garcia spends way to much time overanalyzing things and his emotions get in his way.  When he won the 2008 Players Championship at the age of 28 we all thought it would be a pivotal moment for him but it wasn’t.  Later on that year he lost the PGA Championship to Padraig Harrington, who also beat him in the 2007 British Open in a playoff and after 2008 Garcia went into a dive.  He did show signs of coming back at the end of 2011, but he became very inconsistent.  He had a lot of chances of winning in 2013 but always found a way to blow a gasket in the final round.  So we are all hoping that maybe, just maybe he could muster up some of that magic we thought he had way back in 1999.  At 34 Garcia is coming into what should be the prime of his golfing career, it would be a shame if he was never to win a major or play a vital role in golf.  As for his future play, he is taking a month off and will return to play the Match Play and the Honda Classic.

* This week’s Dubai Desert Classic has a good field with Tiger and Rory playing but as it celebrates it’s 25th birthday it’s not the mega event it use to be.  As great of a city as Dubai is, it doesn’t have the same money that Abu Dhabi has and in a sense that event has taken some of the luster of this event.  It’s interesting to note that some of the marquee guys that have played this event in the past, names like Adam Scott, Justin Rose, Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen and even Martin Kaymer don’t bother to play Dubai anymore.  I don’t know if it’s a money issue, that they can’t get paid to play so they don’t or if maybe it’s more important to go off and play in America like Westwood and Kaymer are doing playing in the Phoenix Open.  With both Tiger and Rory playing it doesn’t shine that light on others that aren’t here, but we have seen an exodus of top names the last five years.

* The talk and buzz in Dubai is first how poorly Tiger played in San Diego on a course that he dominated.  He traveled to Florida and then went on to Dubai arriving on Monday night.  I’ve been told that Woods was his usual cordial self playing in the events Former Champions Challenge but didn’t spend much time with reporters, brushing off the third round 79 as being “a train that he couldn’t get off”.  In a way his 79 is showing that he may be a very good player, but can’t control his game all the time like he did between 1999 and 2003, then again between 2005 and 2008.  Good luck in making a decision on him and the state of his game, in a way he has become a big Jeckel and Hyde, you never know which Tiger Woods will show up.  When Tiger does show up on Thursday he will be paired the first two rounds with Rory McIlroy, whose game is showing signs of shining.  It will be interesting to see if the pairing will spur the two into a great two days of golf, or if it turns into an awkward time which sometimes happens when pairing two stars together.  I chose to think it’s going to be good theater and both have something to prove.

Course Information 

• Played at the Emirates Golf Club
• Doha, Qatar – Par:  72 / Yardage: 7,316

Emirates Golf Club, not only hosts the Omega Dubai Desert Classic but also the Omega Dubai Ladies Masters in December.  It was the first all grass championship golf course in the Middle East when it opened in 1988. The club is part of a 54 hole facility with the Faldo Course and the Creek course, which held this tournament in 1999 and 2000.

The Emirates course was designed by Florida architect Karl Litten and lie amongst a plethora of sand dunes, on a site originally donated by Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Al Maktoum, on whose instructions was that the desert flora was maintained in its natural state. Within a year of opening, the newly christened Majlis hosted the inaugural Dubai Desert Classic in February 1989.  The sprinklers on the Majlis course keep the Bermuda grass growing, alongside the indigenous desert flora, giving a picturesque contrast. The lush fairways and large greens provide a formidable test of golf, guaranteeing a magnificent finish on the 18th hole, a long dog-leg, which has seen as many inspirational finishes as watery disasters in its 19 year history.  Other course highlights include the par three 7th and the gruelling par four 8th.

There are 5 lakes dotted around the course with water coming into play on seven holes.  There are only 41 bunkers on the course but something a bit unique, five greens with no bunkers guarding them.  There isn’t that much rough but if you hit it off the fairway you could find yourself in desert scrub which is sometimes harder to hit out of than rough.  The course is always in great shape and in a way follow the same creed as Augusta National in which the staff works hard to maintain this course in a manner that many feel it’s always the best manicured course on the European Tour.

Just like last week the key to playing the course is to have windless conditions.  If by chance the area is hit by the Shamal winds it makes the course very tough, but this event has never suffered any weather problems like Qatar has experienced.  In looking at the weather forecast, there is zero percent chance of rain with temperatures in the mid 70s, with the wind blowing between 10 and 15 mph.

Golf’s DL injury report:

Nothing to speak of

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic:

Key stat for the winner:

What is the key stat that helps players win in Dubai?  Seems that hitting lot’s of greens is very important.  Of the five winners going back to 2009 all of them were in the top-15 with Rafael Cabrera-Bello leading that stat in 2012 while Stephen Gallacher was 12th in his 2013 victory.

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

• The Dubal Desert Classic has been known as a tournament that produces low scores as the winner has had an average score of just under 16 under par.  Again watch the winds, that has a lot to do with the scoring.
• You can’t call this course a long hitters paradise.  Yes Alvaro Quiros won in 2011 averaging the best of those in the field but since then the winners have been in the middle in hitting it long.  Also hitting fairways is not very important and only one winner in the last five years has been in the top-25 of this stat.
• Mastering the par 5s is the key this week, last year’s winner Stephen Gallacher may of only been 7 under but in 2009 Rory McIlory played them in 12 under.
• The only way that a winner goes over par in any single round is because of the wind.  Henrik Stenson in 2007 was the last player to shot all four rounds in the 60s but only 3 champions (Alvaro Quiros 73, 1st rd in 2011, Tiger Woods 73, 3rd rd in 2008 and Jose Coceres 73, 4th round in 2000) have had a single round over par and that was on a day of high winds.
• In the history of this event there has only been one true gun that seems to play great every time he tees it up in Dubai and that is Ernie Els.  Between 19993 and 2008 he played the Dubai Classic 11 times never finishing higher than 8th, winning it three times, finishing runner-up three times and 3rd twice.  For some odd reason this great streak ended in 2009 when he missed the cut and hasn’t been back to this event since.  So it will be interesting to see how he plays this week.