Patrick Reed is back in Dubai this week for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship. It’s the scene, but not the golf course, of perhaps the most consequential week of his career.
Reed won the Dubai Desert Classic in January at Emirates Golf Club and then decided not to renew his contract with LIV Golf, while the rival league was still getting full financial support from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
He wanted a return to traditional golf. Reed lost in a playoff the following week in Bahrain, and then won the Qatar Masters. Just over two months later, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia shifted its strategy and pulled the plug on LIV Golf.
That left dozens of players scrambling to find a tour. Reed, meanwhile, secured his return to the PGA Tour by being among the top 10 in the Race to Dubai who didn’t already have tour cards. He is No. 3 in the European ranking going into the final week.
“The year has been very satisfying,” Reed said Tuesday. “To kind of make that step and make the opportunity, to have to finish in the top 10 to earn my spot on the PGA Tour, and basically come out and believe in myself and put all my eggs in one basket and go get the job done, means a lot.”
Where he doesn’t get satisfaction is seeing the plight of so many others who stayed with LIV and now will likely have to rely on sponsor exemptions to run-of-the-mill European tour events, waiting a year before they try to qualify for the PGA Tour.
“You never want to see guys struggle or have to sit out, things like that,” Reed said. “At the end of the day, a lot of those guys that are going through that are good friends of mine. You sit there, and you just hope that they are able to come out and do what I did — come out and play solid golf and come out on the PGA Tour.”
Reed is set to tee it off with South Africa’s Casey Jarvis at 3:30 a.m. ET on Thursday from Dubai. Golf Channel will have live Round 1 coverage beginning at 2 a.m.