Fall in the world of golf is always sort of a glimpse into the future, but this week feels particularly so on the DP World Tour.
Look at that leaderboard, with Jon Rahm in front through 54 holes. The second is Tyrrell Hatton, a shot back now elder LIVE teammate. Scroll down a bit and there’s Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott, two gentlemen who routinely play in the DPWT’s biggest events. There’s David Puig tied for sixth, four strokes back of Rahm, and Adrian Meronk tied for eighth, six back.
Mixed in between them are Francesco Laporta, Matthew Jordan, Nathan Kimsey, Jayden Schaper, Sam Bairstow – you know, lesser-heralded guys who play on the European circuit all the time. They are proper golfers, and they are playing extremely proper golf this week in Abu Dhabi.
This is exactly what the DPWT thinks it can have for most of 2027: some of the best players in the world, plying their trade away from the PGA Tour on a more frequent basis, raising the DPWT standard in a way we haven’t seen in years.
Now, there are a few reasons why everyone is here. It’s the last week before the DPWT Championship, and Rahm in particular needed to get this started. It’s his fourth DPWT of the season, which is the minimum required to maintain membership going into the next season…a Ryder Cup year. Without this week, he would not be eligible next fall.
Hatton met his quota, but didn’t enjoy good golf in the process. Since the end of his LIV career, Hatton has missed three of five cuts and finished in the top 25 zero times, pushing him in and out of the goal of qualifying for next week’s final. They finished second to continue their season.
But the rest of the ex-LIV boys are warming up for what next year will hold. They will be worried about Race to Dubai points, not the FedEx Cup. They know how many seats on the DPWT season race will be converted to full membership on the upcoming PGA Tour Championship Series. This is where the biggest money in golf will exist, now that LIV is closed, and there is no cakewalk about it.
In many ways the important the pro golf calendar will begin in the Middle East, in mid-January, where the Dubai Desert Classic offers the first launching point for this purpose. Patrick Reed won a year ago and he absolutely reversed the arc of his future. Anyone who wants to follow the same will do a January in the Middle East, going to Bahrain and maybe even Qatar.
Is South Africa a good fit for Augusta National? I’m not sure, but any ex-LIVers who want to make the most of a trip down there will have three tournaments at their disposal. The DPWT calendar becomes a little less popular in April and May, but then picks up steam in July with the Irish Open now preceding the Scottish Open, which precedes the Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews. It is the season of links, people, and precisely the time that many Ryder Cuppers will make scouting trips to Adare Manor.
It is likely to see the strongest fields in recent memory at the European Masters, in Switzerland, and the French Open, at Le Golf National, both events directly before the Ryder Cup. You’re going to see Rahm, Hatton, Sergio Garcia and a handful of others compete in events they haven’t even thought about in 2026. And from the sounds of it, Bryson DeChambeau has an open invitation to join in the fun too. We have reached the point where we no longer have to imagine an enhanced European tour. It will happen next year, and it all starts with the last round on Sunday.
