THE NUMBER crunching is almost done, but the sextet of Irish tour professionals – from Rory McIlroy’s quest to top the PGA European Tour money list and Pádraig Harrington’s to gatecrash the Race to Dubai finale, Peter Lawrie’s bid to stay within the elite top 60 to Gareth Maybin’s attempt to retain his tour card – competing in this week’s UBS Hong Kong Open have an amount of unfinished business.
McIlroy yesterday played an exhibition with Ryo Ishikawa in Yokohama to raise funds for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, before moving on to Hong Kong for what he called “one of my favourite tournaments of the year”. It is also an event that, in all honesty, McIlroy must win if he is to have any chance of overhauling Luke Donald in the race to win the Order of Merit title.
Six Irish players – McIlroy, Harrington, Lawrie, Maybin, Damien McGrane and Michael Hoey – have descended on Hong Kong for what is the penultimate event of the European Tour season but which, in fact, will actually be the final tournament in terms of deciding the fate of those seeking to retain their tour cards with Maybin and, to a lesser extent, McGrane falling into this latter category.
With the top 115 players on the money list retaining full cards for next season, Maybin – who has missed eight of his last 12 cuts in a season hampered by injury – has to produce the goods in Hong Kong if he is to retain a full tour card.
Although Maybin is currently 120th on the money list, three players ahead of him (Fredrik Jacobsen, Ryan Moore and Tom Lewis) have not played the required number of tournaments to count on the money list and, so, he is effectively in 117th place. But that still leaves the Ulsterman with some work to do and to leapfrog those ahead of him if he is to retain his full tour card for a fourth straight season.
McGrane, too, has to tie up some loose ends. The Co Meath man is 114th on the money list – but, like Maybin, will benefit from the lack of tournaments played by Jacobsen, Moore and Lewis – and making the cut should be sufficient to ensure he retains full playing rights.
If there is a battle for playing privileges for Maybin and McGrane to focus on, then there is a different fight facing Harrington and Lawrie.
Harrington – 67th in the money list, with the top 60 making it to next week’s finale in Dubai – has admitted to “pushing too hard and trying too hard” in explaining how his mental game isn’t working as well as he would like, but he has arrived in Hong Kong faced with a stark reality that he needs to get into the business end of the tournament if he is to prolong his season.
In Harrington’s case, the maths is relatively straightforward: he is €53,410 behind Lawrie – the man on the bubble in 60th place – and requires nothing worse than a top-six placed finish in Hong Kong if he is to extend his season into the desert. Harrington is a previous tournament winner, having claimed the Hong Kong Open in 2004.
Lawrie might be on the bubble, but he only trails the two players immediately ahead of him – Scott Jamieson and Christian Nilsson – by less than €2,000 so perhaps has a little leeway, once he survives the midway cut.
While McIlroy has remained on in Asia – fulfilling a commitment to join Ishikawa yesterday in Japan before moving on to Hong Kong – following on from the World Cup in China, Graeme McDowell has moved on to South Africa to compete in the 12-man field at the Nedbank Challenge in Sun City.
It is McDowell’s first time to play in the challenge but, despite the disappointment of Sunday’s closing round in China where the Irish duo carried a two-shot lead into the last day only to finish tied-fourth, the Ulsterman remarked of himself and McIlroy’s late-season bid for titles, “we have got a few tournaments in us, I would say”.
