The accolade of becoming Europe’s Number One player is sought after by so many but achieved by so few and with the “business end” of the season just around the corner, Danny Willett is targeting the top spot on the Race to Dubai.
Willett currently trails world Number One Rory McIlroy by 363,195 points but with 250,000 points for first place on offer at this week’s 72nd Open D’Italia presented by Damiani, a win for Willett would significantly close the gap on McIlroy. When Willett was asked if he thinks he could catch McIlroy at the top the answer was simple, yes.
“Its 100% there, it’s within grasp, I’ve just got to keep doing what I’ve been doing and playing good golf,” said Willett.
After winning the opening tournament of the 2015 season at the Nedbank Golf Challenge, Willett has had his best year on Tour to date, recently adding the Omega European Masters to his win in South Africa and claiming his first top ten in a Major at this year’s Open Championship.
The Englishman has also had four other top ten finishes including a third place finish in the WGC - Cadillac Match Play Championship which, incidentally, was won by McIlroy. An invitation to the Masters in April was also another notable highlight where he settled for a tie of 38thplace after comfortably making the cut. Not bad for your first trip to Augusta National.
With some of the European Tour’s most highly prized tournaments still to play for, including the Final Series which offers a combined 40 million Race to Dubai points, Willett’s chances of catching McIlory are in good health.
The Englishman is certainly relishing the opportunity to chase McIlroy down after the Tour’s decision to grant the Northern Irishman a special exemption to reduce his minimum number of 2015 European Tour appearances from 13 to 12 following the ankle injury that forced him out of the game for two months over the summer.
“For me personally, it was the correct decision from the Tour to allow Rory to reduce his minimum number of events. If I am going to win The Race to Dubai, then I want to do that by beating the best players.
“You can only be the best by beating the best – I wouldn’t like to give anyone the chance to say that, if I did win it with Rory having being taken out of it, it was a kind of hollow victory or anything like that. I want to win it with him in it and hopefully I can get enough points from the seven events I have left to do that.”
