Graeme McDowell again struggled to get lift-off on the Earth course in matching his scoring average with a 73 on the opening day of the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.
McDowell is returning to the event for a first time in six years but the Greg Norman-designed lay out again did him little favour in managing to squeeze out just one birdie but also two bogeys at Jumeirah Estates.
Graeme McDowell struggling on day one of the DP World with a 73 and matching his scoring average in 25 rounds of the Earth Course
His score continues a run now of seven years when he’s not broken 70 on day one of the DP World while in now 25 loops of the Dubai course, and since the inaugural event in 2010, he’s had just seven rounds in the 60s to be averaging 73.43 shots a round.
It sees the lone Irishman in the Euro 6.6m season-ending event sharing 36th place in the 65-player and in the bigger Race to Dubai picture McDowell to jump just one place to 25th on the money list.
Victor Perez sent the French tricolours to the top of the European mast for a second time in four days on the Jumeirah Estates layout after Parisian Antoine Rozner captured the Golf in Dubai championship on the neighbouring Fire layout.
Perez, who lives with his Scottish girlfriend in Dundee, captured last year’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, leads the field with a round of a five-under par 67.
Perez teed-up sixth on the Race to Dubai and is already projected to end the week as European Tour No. 1 and, if so, he would be the first French golfer in the 48-year history of the European Tour to be crowned No. 1
“It all depends. In the position I’m in and I have nothing to lose,” he said.
“I have everything to gain. So, for me it’s really a going-for-it mentality that I have to keep for four rounds.
“You still have to play proper golf and hit the right shots and sometimes take your medicine, but again, I have really nothing to lose, and it’s a matter of making a lot of birdies”.
England’s Matthew Fitzpatrick, Scottish lefty Robert MacIntyre and South African Erik Van Rooyen share second place with four under par 68s.
Two-major winner Martin Kaymer, 2017 Race to Dubai champion Tommy Fleetwood, three-time Rolex Series winner Tyrrell Hatton and Finland’s Sami Valimaki are a shot further back.
Leading Race to Dubai money-earner Patrick Reed, and looking to become the first American in the 48-year history of the European Tour, holed a birdie gem at the last and much to the delight of a packed corporate box behind the green, to be just three off the lead thanks to a two-under par 70.’’’
And while McDowell not a favourite of this week’s host venue there is always the special memory of now eight years ago.
McDowell surprised his surprised his now wife, Kristin in getting down on one knee to propose to her on the 212-metre high helipad of the stunning 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel.
