PGA commish: We hope for fans in late 2020

The European Tour’s season finale tees off this week in Dubai, but it’s a pair of Americans who have the best chance to win the tour’s top prize. The Race to Dubai – which concludes with this week’s DP World Tour Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates – is led by Collin Morikawa, with Billy Horschel in the No. 2 spot. As the number of Americans competing in the Race to Dubai continues to increase, this could become a more common sight. Next year marks the beginning of a new era in the PGA TOUR and European Tour, which will be known as the DP World Tour in 2022. As part of their strategic alliance, there will be three events next year that are part of both tours’ season-long points race, the FedExCup and Race to Dubai. Morikawa earned the pole position in this year’s Race to Dubai with his wins at the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession and The Open. Morikawa is trying to add the Race to Dubai to the two prizes he’s already taken from Europe this year, the claret jug and the Ryder Cup. Morikawa’s win in The Open was his second major triumph, and he followed it by securing the clinching point at Whistling Straits. Horschel finished second to Morikawa at Concession, then won his own World Golf Championship and, like Morikawa, a prestigious event in England. He claimed the Dell Technologies Match Play Championship in March and then became the first American since Arnold Palmer to win the European Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship. “It’s great to be where I am in the standings,” Horschel said at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. “At the start of the year the FedExCup is No. 1, but I’m a member of the European Tour so you never know how things might pan out – because you have to play well at certain events to make it work, and I really did a good job of that for the first time in my career. “The goal is to become the first American to win the Race to Dubai.” To do that, he’ll have to go through Morikawa, who makes his return to Dubai after making his European Tour debut at the event in 2020. Morikawa finished T10 at last year’s DP World Tour Championship. “Winning The Race to Dubai would mean a lot because I want my game to travel,” Morikawa said in 2020. “I want to be a world player. I want to be able to bring my game anywhere, adapt to the different places I come to, and this is just the first step in doing that.” A little further down The Race to Dubai is another star American making his Dubai debut this week – Will Zalatoris. Zalatoris, the PGA TOUR’s Rookie of the Year, is 11th in the Race to Dubai. A runner-up finish at the Masters, and top-10s at the PGA Championship and World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational helped him attain his high standing. Zalatoris is based in Dallas, Texas (about 8,000 miles from Dubai) but has seen the blueprint laid down by golfers like Morikawa and said it’s likely more guys will be going back and forth between the European Tour and PGA TOUR. “In the future I’ll be planning on going (to Europe) a decent amount,” said Zalatoris. There will be plenty of guys with deep TOUR ties teeing it up in Dubai, as well, including WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational winner Abraham Ancer, Tyrrell Hatton, Shane Lowry, Ian Poulter, Garrick Higgo and two-time FedExCup Champion Rory McIlroy. Hatton, Poulter, Lowry, Patrick Reed and Christiaan Bezuidenhout are playing in Dubai after competing last week at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open. Viktor Hovland, who earned his third PGA TOUR title two weeks ago in Mexico, will not be playing Dubai, nor will U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm. Both European Ryder Cuppers cited the need for rest after a long year. But in order for those other international stars to win the European Tour’s top prize, they’ll have to overtake a pair of Americans. Something that will likely become more commonplace moving forward. “It’s trending in that direction,” said Zalatoris.

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Last we saw 18-time PGA TOUR winner Rory McIlroy, more than three weeks ago, he was shooting a dispiriting final-round 75 to finish T8 at the U.S. Open in New York. Bryson DeChambeau, meanwhile, was bludgeoning Winged Foot into submission, his Ruthian approach leading to a six-shot victory over Matthew Wolff. McIlroy, like countless others, could scarcely believe it. "It’s kind of hard to really wrap my head around it," he said. Well, he's had time, and he's hinting at bringing some extra firepower to THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK this week. With some speed work in the gym and a lighter shaft in his driver, he posted on Instagram that he's getting up around 190 mph ball speed and 340 yards of carry. Has he been inspired by DeChambeau? Well, yes, but only to a point. "Yeah, for the last couple weeks I was working on some stuff," McIlroy said from Las Vegas, where eight of the top 10 and 70 of the top 125 from the final 2020 FedExCup standings will take on Shadow Creek. "I think as a golfer, we’re so ingrained to trying to hit the ball where you’re looking, and I think with - I think that’s one of the great things that Bryson’s done. "Bryson, when he speed-trains, he just hits the ball into a net, so he doesn’t really know where it’s going," McIlroy continued. "He’s just trying to move as fast as he can ... and sort of making the target irrelevant for the time being and then you can sort of try to bring it in from there. From what I’ve done and what I’ve been trying - you know, sort of experimenting with the last couple weeks - it’s the fastest I’ve ever moved the club, the fastest my body has ever moved." Distance, he added, has always been an advantage, whether it was the era of Jack Nicklaus; the heyday of Tiger Woods; or today. For most of his career, McIlroy has been at or near the top of the Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee stat. Now he's flirting with making one of his strengths even more of an asset. Still, he added, just because he has been experimenting with extra speed, that doesn't mean he'll always use it. "At least I know that if I need to do it, I can do it," he said. Justin Rose admitted he's still just trying to hit the ball straight again, let alone far, but said he's been taking note as McIlroy and others try to catch up to the TOUR's new distance leader. "I think I’ve seen the trickledown effect of what Bryson’s been doing," Rose said, "and you’re seeing guys like Rory and even Justin Thomas - I’m hearing kind of rumors out on the range, everyone’s trying to crank it up a little bit, get a few more miles an hour." If this all feels a bit jarring, it might be because it seems like just yesterday that McIlroy, 31, was the pacesetter. A four-time major winner, he's young enough to still be in his prime, or just entering it. He won THE PLAYERS Championship and his second FedExCup title just last year, but hasn't found his A game since the TOUR returned in June. His last win was the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions last November. Now along comes DeChambeau, whose relentless innovation still invites criticism even as it succeeds. McIlroy took time out to clarify that he is not one of those critics. "I called what Bryson did brilliant, and I think my comments maybe got taken out of context," he said. "I said he’s taking advantage of everything we have in the game right now. I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I meant he has went to the nth degree of everything we have available to us: science, TrackMan, biomechanics, everything, all the knowledge that we have nowadays that golfers 20 years ago didn’t have access to because there just wasn’t enough knowledge out there." DeChambeau, McIlroy added, has to his credit been willing to go deeper down that rabbit hole than anyone else. "He’s worked his ass off to do that and it’s paying off hugely," McIlroy said. How much will he, Thomas, Rose and others tear apart their own games in search of similar quantum leaps? Time will tell, but clearly the process has begun. "I think it’s the way the game’s going," McIlroy said. "I got sent a really good article last weekend, it was in the Wall Street Journal, just about every single sport becoming faster, longer, stronger, and I don’t think golf’s any different. I’m just trying to keep up with the way it’s going."

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Scottie Scheffler is 25 and has won twice in his past three starts. Viktor Hovland is 24 and has four top-5 finishes in his past six starts. The PGA Tour is not hurting for young talent.

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