Golf news
Danny Willett wins Dubai Desert Classic
England’s Danny Willett is the winner of 2016 Dubai Desert Classic and can’t complain about having a bad season start. With just one shot ahead of countryman Andy Sullivan and Spain’s top golfer Rafael Cabrera-Bello, Willett made a 15-foot birdie on the 18th hole, closing with 3 under par 69.
While still excited about his victory, Danny declared: “I’m just ecstatic. You can’t buy that feeling, coming down the back nine, the last three holes, in contention in a golf tournament. You can’t pay for that experience; you’ve got to earn it.”
“You’d love to win by five or six every time, but when you win in that fashion, it does feel that little bit extra special. It means when the pressure is on I can produce the goods.”
Andy Sullivan, who finished runner-up for the second time (being actually bookies favorite) in Dubai tournament, congratulated his compatriot declaring:
“Fair play to Danny, to birdie the last hole was a tough putt,”; “He was under a lot of pressure and stepped up well.”
“I struggled again with my driving. I’m not really hitting any fairways, and that made it difficult to get lots of birdies from there. I put myself in a great position to win and just not got over the line.”
Including the Dubai Desert Classic, Willett has a total of four European Tour titles won with previous victories in Germany, South Africa and Switzerland. His current record reflects a professional golf player accustomed to producing great results in all environments. With this victory, Danny can contemplate a future place in the world’s top 10.
Before the Dubai tournament, the 28 years old professional golfer occupied the 20th position in the world rankings. However after winning the Dubai tournament, Willett leaps to the 12th position in world rankings and 3rd position in the Ryder Cup Standings. With his current victory, Danny acquired prize money of more than 400000 EUR and secured his place in qualifying for the British Olympic team.
With those two major competitions in sight, Willett declared: “You try not to think about it when you’re on the golf course, but they are two massive goals of mine”.
“I’ll do the same thing I’ve been doing the last couple of years, it’s just day by day, week by week, and hopefully come August we’ll be in Rio and come September we’ll be in Hazeltine.”
Also regarding his plans to compete in European tournaments, the young English golf player told reporters:
“I think that European golf is strong. It’s young, but it’s really strong. I think you saw that in the Eurasia Cup; that you just had a really thirsty group of lads there. The young British lads are just going to keep progressing, and I can see it being very competitive for the next few years.”
World’s number two and last year’s winner Rory McIlroy, finished tied for sixth on 273 together with another pre-tournament favorite – Henrik Stenson.
Although he hit eight birdies in a round of 65, McIlroy was disappointed for not doing better than 15 under. After the tournament, the Irishman declared: ”It’s sort of a week of what could have been. There was a lot of really good golf in there. I played a lot of great shots and made a lot of birdies, but just made a few too many mistakes, as well.”
“I played the combined front nine in five over on Friday and Saturday and if I had not of done that, things could have been different.
“It’s been nice to shake the rust off these last couple of weeks. It gives me a good understanding of what I need to do going into the next few weeks”.
