[Photo: Richard Heathcote]<\/p>\n
The DP World Tour is scheduled to finish its 2026 season in the Middle East. But two months from the tour\u2019s playoffs, there are growing questions if the finale will take place, or where.<\/p>\n
The final two events \u2013 the Abu Dhabi Championship and DP World Tour Championship \u2013 are slated for the first two weeks of November in the United Arab Emirates. However, the area has been targeted by ballistic missiles and drone strikes as an upshot of the Iran War. With the conflict showing no signs of slowing down, there have been rumblings as to whether the Old World circuit would risk visiting UAE given the regional instability.<\/p>\n
RELATED: The reason why LIV Golf\u2019s future is holding up a DP World Tour pathway to the PGA Tour\u2019s new model<\/p>\n
Count Matt Fitzpatrick among those with reservations about proceeding as scheduled. Fitzpatrick has captured the DP World Tour Championship three times, including last year in a playoff. But on Wednesday at the DP World Tour\u2019s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship, Fitzpatrick raised concerns about whether he would defend his title.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing completely honest as things stand right now, I would say I\u2019m not that comfortable,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cNo, I wouldn\u2019t be that comfortable. A few things have obviously changed for me, perspective and stuff. I\u2019ve had a child in August, and that obviously kind of changes things, I guess, a bit more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of what you read on news, I know where you get your news isn\u2019t always\u2026 can be very one-sided, particularly in the US. But I think for me, as things stand right now, it would feel a little bit weird, given what I\u2019m reading elsewhere. Things can change overnight, I\u2019m sure. I think it seems to be going down that path of things are getting better. I\u2019ve sort of looked on the UK website, I know they have changed from essential travel only to one step better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
RELATED: The DP World Tour is playing hardball with LIV golfers for 2027. Jon Rahm hopes a compromise can be found<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick wasn\u2019t the only one to speak on the matter. Open champion Ryan Fox said he was monitoring the situation: \u201cIf I feel like it\u2019s not the right decision, I might not go.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of now, a source familiar with knowledge of the DP World Tour\u2019s thinking said the tour still intends to host the events, although it will continue to take advice from international experts. Fitzpatrick alluded that he understands the position the tour is in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously frustrating that the decision hasn\u2019t been made so you can plan what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I understand there\u2019s obviously a lot of moving parts to that, and it\u2019s obviously difficult to make these decisions. I think if the tour do go, I\u2019m sure they have had the best advice possible on what that looks like. As things stand right now, I wouldn\u2019t necessarily be too keen on going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick is No.4 in the Official World Golf Ranking and has won three times in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Photo: Richard Heathcote] The DP World Tour is scheduled to finish its 2026 season in the Middle East.…","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_volume":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1262,208,332,1263,209,4599,58,251,51],"class_list":["post-12654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-matt-fitzpatrick","tag-abu-dhabi-championship","tag-article","tag-dp-world-tour","tag-dp-world-tour-championship","tag-golf-digest","tag-iran-war","tag-matt-fitzpatrick","tag-news","tag-ryan-fox","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@fogolf\/117286054400109715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/pros\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}