Minimum service this Thursday in Dubai. Severely disrupted by the weather, the first round of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic recorded a delay of more than 6h30 on the initial schedule. Blame it on the very generous rains that fell on the Emirate overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.
Flooded, the Emirates Golf Club could not be restored before the start of the afternoon (10:15 a.m. in France).
Victor Perez, results
Result of the races, only half of the field (66 players) was able to start and a handful managed to sign their card.
Twelve in all! If it remains very anecdotal, it is the English Matthew Jordan, Daniel Gavins and Oliver Wilson who take the lead at the club house with a score of 68 (-4). Even if Thomas Pieters is virtually in front with his -5 after fifteen holes.
Associated with the Belgian in the same game (and the Australian Min Woo Lee), Victor Perez also stopped at hole n°15. The Frenchman, winner of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship last Sunday, is in second place at -4 thanks, once again, to a very solid golf game.
Starting from 10, the Tarbais did not concede the slightest bogey, distilling four birdies at holes 10, 18, 2 and 5. The current leader of the Race shares this place – very provisional – with, in addition to the trio mentioned above, the American Patrick Reed and the English Tommy Fleetwood, stopped respectively after 16 and 15 holes… Twelfths at -2 after 16 and 14 holes, Antoine Rozner and Romain Langasque are also in a good dynamic.
For his first tournament of the season on the DP World Tour, Rory McIlroy is also content with a -2 (and therefore a 12th place) after playing 15 holes with Tommy Fleetwood and New Zealander Ryan Fox. All these little people will come to complete their first round on Friday morning from 8:00 a.m.
(5:00 a.m. in France) before giving way to the 66 other golfers who have stayed warm in their hotel room. Among them, three Tricolores: Julien Brun, Matthieu Pavon and Alexander Levy. If the weather – still very uncertain since heavy rain is once again announced overnight but also in the early morning of Friday – allows it, this second flight of players could swallow perhaps not thirty-six holes but at least one good thirty before an end of the second round scheduled for Saturday morning…
