Patrick Reed, the 35-year old golfer from Texas, certainly seems to take to desert life. On the DP World Tour this season he has already won in Dubai, only lost after a playoff in Bahrain and then won again last week in Qatar. Amid all that, he found time not to bother renewing his contract with LIV Golf, which means he is likely to be seen pretty frequently on this side of the Atlantic in the coming months because he will not be eligible to compete, and then only as a non-member, on the PGA Tour until September.
Reed’s success in the Arab world has also had welcome consequences for him in his homeland. We are not yet halfway through February but, based on recent precedent, he will have already secured a PGA Tour card for next season as one of the 10 highest-ranked players on this year’s DP World Tour who do not hold said card. Plus, based on recent form, he will surely also be looking forward to returning to Augusta National in April. Winner of the Masters in 2018, Reed has finished in the top-10 in four of his last six starts there.
“I felt like my game was really solid and I knew that I loved Dubai,” he said after victory at the Qatar Masters. “I’ve played well there before…[and then to] close out this week is awesome.” And he has further ambitions for what we might consider the European Tour’s adventures in Asia. “It’s always been a dream of mine to be an American and come out and win the Race to Dubai,” he added. “And, hey, we’re off to a fast start.”
Indeed he is, as will have been noticed by the man who has won the Race to Dubai in each of the past four seasons: Rory McIlroy. The last one was his seventh such title all told, one shy of Colin Montgomerie’s record tally. At present McIlroy is 30th on the 2026 Race to Dubai standings whereas Reed, of course, is at the top. To say it is early in the year to be making predictions about what will transpire in November is evidently a serious understatement, but only a fool would write off Reed’s prospects of fulfilling his ambitions in that regard. And, remember, there is also the matter of where the season’s concluding tournament, the DP World Tour Championship, will be staged. In Dubai. Which means back to the desert.
Staying with the desert, Elvis Smylie won LIV Golf’s season-opener by a shot from Jon Rahm in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. On Monday, another press release was issued by the promoters. This had a distinctly desert orientation, too. It was headlined ‘LIV Golf Joins Forces with SuperSport and Canal+ Group to Transform Golf Broadcasting Across Sub-Saharan Africa’. LIV Golf has road-tested a few novel ideas in its near four-year history but I am betting it is not planning to stage an event in the Sahel.