They play in front of packed stadiums every week and race around circuits in excess of 300km. But not even the English Premier League or F1 can prepare your for the nerve-jangling experience of teeing it up alongside a DP World Tour star.

So it proved in the Slync.io Dubai Desert Classic Pro-Am on Wednesday.

Manchester United defender Harry Maguire and Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, two regular England international team-mates, joined compatriot Lee Westwood in a glamour group on the eve of the $8 million Rolex Series event at Emirates Golf Club.

Pickford later admitted he found the round more nerve-wracking than keeping goal for his country.

“I loved it really. Even though I play in front of 40,000 people every week, I’m out of my comfort zone here – it was a bit nerve-wracking,” said the Goodison Park custodian, before joking: “Normally my handicap is eight but I think I played off about 28 today. I thoroughly enjoyed it though and I learned a lot playing with a top professional like Westy. I’ve not played many courses abroad, so this was an amazing opportunity.”

Jordan Pickford & Harry Maguire

Manchester United skipper Maguire, who plays off a six handicap, was delighted to interrupt a mid-season break from club football with his first Slync.io Dubai Desert Classic Pro-Am appearance. 

“I enjoyed it, the course is amazing and to get the chance to play with Lee and score a few birdies was great. We’ve been looked after really well, it has been a lovely day overall.”

McLaren Racing star Lando Norris swapped the high-octane thrills and spills of the F1 cockpit for the Majlis Course fairways. The 22-year-old, taking part in his first ever Pro-Am event, teed off in a group with Austrian pro Bernd Wiesberger and admitted to being a bundle of nerves.

Lando Norris

“I was very nervous for the first few holes,” said Norris. “I was shaking on the first few tee shots, but I ended up playing much better than I thought I would. Normally I play a relaxed round with mates, so this was very different – a lot more pressure!

“The course was incredible, and it was great to play with Bernd. It is very interesting to watch a professional at the top of his game in a different sport, to see his approach and his mentality, especially when I am at the bottom level of his sport! It was lovely to get some time away from the cold of the UK, and great to relax as I will be straight back to work when I go home.”

The post “Nerve-wracking”. Lando Norris was just like us at the Dubai Desert Classic Pro-Am appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

“I’m here practising tonight but I’ll definitely be watching the action this weekend. I can see the players go by from my apartment window, so I’m very lucky the tournament is quite literally in my neck of the woods, we all are. It’s always good to have the Ladies European Tour back at Emirates Golf Club, it’s a special venue, one of the best and a great home for the Dubai Moonlight Classic,” said Yorke, who won three consecutive English Premier League championships with Manchester United between 1999-2001, as well as the UEFA Champion’s League during the Red Devils’ historic treble season in 1999.

MORE: Friday’s Dubai Moonlight Classic Daily News is FREE here

Yorke reserved special praise for the Dubai Moonlight Classic’s unique evening format: “The tournament’s night-time setting is fantastic, being played in the moonlight under the floodlights, it’s great to see and I am sure everybody will come out to support the girls this weekend,” said the former Trinidad and Tobago striker, who captained his country at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

After retiring from football in 2009, Yorke confessed that golf is a key avenue to maintain his competitive spirit. “I’m a big fan of the game, I love it. After my retirement from football, I have more time and this game brings a little bit of everything in terms of competitiveness. It’s obviously not a team sport, it’s all about you. My work ethic is if you put the effort in you get the rewards out, and I’m certainly hitting it well tonight – although maybe not as well as the girls out on the course,” he added.

RELATED: Fassi, Karlsson co-lead as Dubai Moonlight Classic set for cliffhanger conclusion

The post Former Man United striker Dwight Yorke is a big fan of Dubai’s annual LET stop appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
VIRGINIA WATER, England — His record in what the European Tour grandly views as its flagship event is “a bit up and down.” Which is not quite accurate. “More down than up” would be a more precise representation of Rory McIlroy’s past performances in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. Four times in eight starts the Northern Irishman has prematurely driven off the famous Burma Road course, missing out on weekend play. But he does have a victory there back in 2014.

“This is a course where if you’re not quite on, you can get frustrated easily,” he said. “If you’re playing well and you have the ball under control, it feels quite easy because you can hit fairways and hit greens and give yourself chances. So I think it magnifies either side of your golf game. Playing well, you can do great. But playing badly, it frustrates and it’s hard to get out of that. So although I’ve had my fair share of bad play here, I still feel like I’ve played well enough to have some good memories and draw on some good experiences.”

McIlroy’s play over the last few months actually mirrors his experiences in this $7 million event, the first in the European Tour’s Rolex Series for 2018 and the first tournament in which Ryder Cup qualifying points are multiplied by 1.5. His 13 stroke-play starts during the 2017-’18 PGA Tour and European Tour seasons have produced a mixed bag of results. One victory—the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March—and three top-three finishes on his home circuit balanced by a trio of missed cuts.

“The good has been very good, and the bad has been worse and more inconsistent than I would want it to be,” he admitted. “Starting 2018 in the Middle East, the win at Bay Hill and getting myself into position at Augusta—they were all great tournaments and great weeks. But then I would like the weeks where I’m not feeling so good about my game to be times when I still have a chance or be there or thereabouts going into the last round—not weekends off. Just making the bad golf not as bad, that’s the thing I’ve wanted this year.”

McIlroy played with former Manchester United footballer Paul Scholes, a childhood hero, during Tuesday’s pro-am.

Blaming a swing that has, at times, been “out of sync”—his lower body outrunning his upper body led to him hitting six or seven balls left into lakes during his last two starts in the U.S.—McIlroy was keen to emphasise an overall contentment with his career so far. The acute disappointment of the Masters is also all but forgotten. Or so he was at pains to emphasize. Lest we forget, playing with eventual winner Patrick Reed in the final round, the four-time major champion could do no better than 74 and a T-5 finish.

“The further away an event gets, the more it is in your rear view mirror, the less you think about it and the more you are able to take positives from it,” he claimed. “I played myself into the final group. I got it going on Saturday. But I didn’t quite have it on Sunday. These things happen. It’s not as if I had the lead. I was three-shots behind. It was always going to be a tough task to make that up.”

As ever when McIlroy is presented to the U.K. media, the questions roamed widely, from the 29-year-old’s attitude to fame and his reaction to the announcement of European Ryder Cup skipper Thomas Bjorn’s vice captains one day earlier. The first, again like his recent play, provoked a “good and bad” reaction. Playing with former Manchester United footballers Paul Scholes and Teddy Sheringham (“my childhood heroes”) was a definite plus. But the lack of privacy could be wearisome. “Everyone knows what you do 24 hours a day,” he said.

On Bjorn’s Ryder Cup appointments, McIlroy expressed an almost complete lack of concern—and more than a little common sense—over the number of assistants available to the Dane. The roles of Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Lee Westwood and Luke Donald, he said, were to help the captain more than the players. And what really mattered was who was hitting the shots on the course and holing the putts at the right time.

“If they can help Thomas feel more comfortable and be more decisive in what he is doing, they will have done a good job,” McIlroy said. “They are all people he is comfortable with. And the guys he selected will all be appreciative of the opportunity. Down the road, they could take on a leadership role too.”

The same could be said of McIlroy this week. Proverbially at least. After a missed cut. the famine, in his last start at the Players, he’s due a feast.

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