Sunday’s heavyweight battle is a window into 2027

Fall in the golf world is always some sort of look to the future, but this week feels particularly so on the DP World Tour.

Look at that leaderboard, with Jon Rahm out front thru 54 holes. Second is Tyrrell Hatton, one shot back of his now former LIV teammate. Scroll down a bit and there’s Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott, two gents who routinely play in the DPWT’s biggest events. There’s David Puig tied for sixth, four shots back of Rahm, and Adrian Meronk tied for eighth, six back. 

Mixed in among them are Francesco Laporta, Matthew Jordan, Nathan Kimsey, Jayden Schaper, Sam Bairstow — you know, less heralded types who play on the European circuit all the time. They’re proper golfers nonetheless, and playing extremely proper golf this week in Abu Dhabi. 

This is exactly what the DPWT thinks it may have throughout much 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 witnessed for years.

Now, there are a few reasons why everyone is here. It’s the final week before the DPWT Championship, and Rahm in particular needed to make this start. It’s his fourth of the DPWT season, which is the minimum required to maintain membership entering next season … a Ryder Cup year. Without this week, he’d be ineligible next fall. 

Hatton has met his quota, but he hasn’t enjoyed good golf in the process. Since his LIV career ended, Hatton has missed three of five cuts and finished in the top 25 zero times, pushing him down and out of the qualifying target for next week’s season finale. Finishing second would continue his season. 

But the rest of the ex-LIV boys are warming up for what next year is going to look like. They’ll be worried about Race to Dubai points, not the FedEx Cup. They’ll know how many spots on the DPWT season-long race will convert to full membership on the PGA Tour’s future Championship Series. That’s where the biggest money in golf will exist, now that LIV is shuttering, and there’s no cakewalk onto it.

In many ways the important pro golf calendar will start in the Middle East, in mid-January, where the Dubai Desert Classic offers the first launching point to that end. Patrick Reed won it a year ago and it absolutely flipped the arc of his future. Anyone who wants to follow suit will make it a Middle East January, bopping over to Bahrain and maybe even Qatar. 

Is South Africa a good tune-up for Augusta National? I’m not sure, but any of the ex-LIVers who want to make the most of a trip down there will have three tournaments at their disposal. The DPWT schedule gets a little less popular in April and May, but then will take full force in July with the Irish Open now preceding the Scottish Open, which precedes The Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews. That’s links season, folks, and precisely the time many Ryder Cuppers will be taking scouting trips to Adare Manor.

It’s likely we’ll see the strongest fields in recent memory at the European Masters, in Switzerland, and the French Open, at Le Golf National, the two events directly before the Ryder Cup. You’re going to see Rahm, Hatton, Sergio Garcia and a handful of others compete in events they weren’t even thinking about in 2026. And from the sounds of it, Bryson DeChambeau has an open invite to join the fun, too. We’ve reached the point of no longer having to imagine a bolstered European tour. It’s going to happen next year, and it all kinda starts with Sunday’s final round.