Rory McIlroy has hit his next big goal since the end of the major championship season. It’s in his sights, but an old rival stands in his way.
“Once the major season was over, that’s what I turned my attention to,” McIlroy said The Locker Roomthe DP World Tour preview, ahead of this week’s DP World Championship in India to chase his record eighth run to the Dubai title.
McIlroy has won four Race to Dubai titles in a row and has seven overall. An eighth would tie Colin Montgomerie’s record, a mark McIlroy covets. McIlroy left the major season and he set his eyes on Patrick Reedwho won in Dubai and Qatar earlier this year and has topped the Race to Dubai rankings ever since.
“Yeah, well, I’m motivated regardless of who it is,” McIlroy said of chasing Reed at Wentworth. “Obviously Patrick and I have had a lot of battles over the years, whether it’s the Ryder Cup, the final round in a major, the Dubai Desert Classic a few years ago. He’s a great competitor, and he’s played well all year. I respect him for how he’s done this, and coming here, he put his head down and did the work, and it was really good to see.”
cane, who left LIV Golf in Januaryhe spent 2026 playing on the DP World Tour while serving a one-year PGA Tour suspension. By finishing in the top 10 of the Race to Dubai standings, which Reed is guaranteed to do, the 2018 Masters champion will secure his PGA Tour card for 2027. If he finishes ahead of all other non-PGA Tour members, he will earn a spot in the 2027 Signature Events.
All that is to say, a lot is on the line this week – and in the coming weeks – for Reed and McIlroy, who the once icy relationship is beginning to thaw. But Reed isn’t the only obstacle McIlroy faces as he pursues another career milestone. Another threat has been lurking – one that has taken the lead at the India DP World Championship through two and a half rounds of suspended play and looks set to derail the Reed-McIlroy duel that has been brewing for months.
Eugenio Chacarra, who, like Reed, joined LIV Golf in 2022, entered the week in India at No. 2 in the Race to Dubai rankings after leapfrogging McIlroy last week at the Spanish Open. Chacarra was once one of the most popular golfers in the world and joined LIV Golf at the start of the breakout league. He played in LIV for three seasons before his contract was not renewed after the 2024 campaign. He expressed his complaints and then he cobbled together a DP World Tour calendar with sponsor invites in 2025. He won the Hero Indian Open in 2025, but faded in the stretch of the DP World Tour season and finished outside the top 10, which means his PGA Tour card will have to wait.
Chacarra entered the 2026 season focused on recovery and nutrition. He didn’t want to have his game drop off at the end of the season again and cost him a PGA Tour card. Chacarra won the KLM Open and the DS Automobiles 83° Open d’Italia. He added a T4 finish at the Omega European Masters, a T3 at the French Open and a T2 at the Spanish Open to leapfrog McIlroy and within 166 points of Reed.
While the focus earlier in the week at Delhi Golf Club was on McIlroy, Reed and defending champion Tommy Fleetwood, it was Chacarra who opened with back-to-back 67s and was 4 under through 11 holes in his third round to take the lead before play was called on Saturday due to darkness. That puts Chacarra at 14 under, two shots ahead of Joost Luiten and Angel Hidalgo. Reed opened with a 3-over 75, but rebounded with a 69 to make the cut on even par. He played the first 13 holes of his third round in 6 under and is eight shots behind Chacarra. As for McIlroy, he opened with rounds of 70 and 68, but is 2 over through 15 holes in Round 3 and 10 shots back of Chacarra.
Like Reed, Chacarra tried to shoot the scores needed to reach the PGA Tour. Is it all, but he made sure of thatBut now he has his sights set on beating two of the world’s best players to claim a season-long title that many thought would be decided by a McIlroy-Reed tug-of-war.
“Obviously they are (two of the best players in the world), so for me to compete with them, I need to bring my A game, and I tried to do that,” Chacarra said on Saturday. “My team and myself will put everything we can to fight in Dubai. Obviously, I need to get points, have some good weeks because those guys, they never rest. It will always be a good week for them; they will win.
“So I need to, like, build my momentum, and hopefully I can continue to do that.”
Four years ago, Reed was on the 4Aces, Chacarra was a member of Fireballs GC, McIlroy was the PGA Tour’s chief spokesperson in the golf civil conflict and the DP World India Championship does not exist. So McIlroy threw his support behind the event. He added the Australian Open to his schedule as he looked to check the national open and new golf experiences off his professional bucket list. Chacarra left LIV Golf in 2025 and Reed followed a year later. U The once Saudi-backed league is now mired in bankruptcy court as it tries to survive after the loss of funding from the Public Investment Fund. On Wednesday, lawyers for the league said they would know by the end of the month whether they were wrapping things up or starting over.
On the other side of the world, two former LIV stars and LIV’s biggest opponent are dueling for one of pro golf’s biggest prizes. Perhaps this is the biggest sign that the game is finally starting to come together.
