Nicolai Kristensen is hoping to use past experience to continue his strong start to the year when he tees it up in the UAE Challenge at Saadiyat Beach Golf Club this week, the second of back-to-back events in Abu Dhabi.
The Dane’s third place finish at last week’s Abu Dhabi Challenge was his best of the season so far, and catapulted him into 14th place in the season-long Road to Mallorca Rankings.
The 31-year-old has narrowly missed out on promotion to the DP World Tour in each of the last two seasons, but after getting off to another fast start in 2024, he’s hoping to convert that into graduation this time around.
“I hope I’ve learned from the last two years”, he said. “I hope it will make a difference and I will be stronger throughout the whole season instead of just the beginning.
“I am and I should be in a stronger place to finish in the top 20 compared to the last two years.”
Kristensen has won on the Challenge Tour before, having triumphed in a playoff at the 2022 D+D Czech Challenge. He’s targeting further success in the UAE this week - having finished in the top 25 in all three of his starts in the Gulf nation since the Challenge Tour returned there in 2023 - before the Road to Mallorca heads to Europe, including an event – the Danish Golf Challenge – in his homeland.
“I like being here,” he added. “The food, hotels and courses are all brand new - everything is great. It suits us players being here, and it’s just a really good place to play golf.
“The European Swing is normally where I’m most comfortable playing. The courses are a little more suited to the European players, so I’m looking forward to it.
“We’re playing in Denmark this year, which is always nice. The course is one and a half hours from my home, so that will be one of the highlights of my year.”
The first round of the UAE Challenge gets underway on Thursday at 6:30am local time with Kristensen teeing it up at 7:00am alongside Englishman Joe Dean and South African JJ Senekal.
