McI lroyalt y
Purkey: Wheels Off
Hopkins: Rose’s Journey
AJGA Season-Ending Honors
The Race To Dubai was beginning to look
like The Race To Dubious.
Rory McIlroy already had sewn up the
season’s points chase before the players arrived
in the Middle East, damping much of the early
week buzz. Meanwhile, there was worrisome
(and accurate) news that more top Europeans –
Martin Kaymer and Nicolas Colsaerts to name
two – were joining the PGA Tour in 2013.
Then Sunday arrived at the DP World Tour
Championship in the most spectacular fashion.
First, Justin Rose reminded us what a
quietly remarkable year he has produced with
a loudly explosive final-round 62 that shattered
the course record and left 54-hole leader
McIlroy three shots back with five to play.
It was a fitting conclusion to a 2012 in
which Rose won a WGC event in Miami, top-tenned at The Masters, placed third at the PGA
Championship at Kiawah and came in second
at the Tour Championship before taking a star
turn at the Ryder Cup near Chicago.
“I knew,” McIlroy said after bogeying the
the 13th, “I needed to do something special.”
The world No. 1 did even more than that.
He birdied the final five holes to win by two
and leave Rose and third-round co-leader
Luke Donald in his turgid wake.
Special, indeed.
From Rory’s sublime finish to the PGA
Tour’s ridiculous decision, we now segue
to the season-ending, 108-hole crucible
known as Q-School that begins Wednesday
in California.
The drama the traditional Q-School always
gave us will be missed much more than the
new qualifying system concocted for 2013 will
be welcomed.
Memo to the bosses at Ponte Vedra Beach:
If it isn’t broken ...
Brian Hewitt
DP World Tour Championship winner Rory McIlroy
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