Hi there golf fans and welcome to our first column for 2025.
If the last week is anything to go by, 2025 promises to be a bumper year for Kiwi golf. Our two leading male golfers nearly pulled off a truly remarkable double act. Midway through the final round of the Hero Desert Classic in Dubai, Daniel Hillier was in a two-way tie for first place and Ryan Fox was in a tie for second place. Was this going to be a 1, 2 Kiwi finish in this US$9million tournament? One of the richest golf events anywhere in the world in 2025. Alas it wasn’t quite to be.
As the sun went down in the desert, Daniel Hillier finished second to Tyrell Hatton and Ryan Fox finished in a tie for 10th place, a result he was very pleased with. As he pointed out, he hadn’t played in a tournament for a couple of months. He also had medical matters around his hip that needed attending to. All he was hoping for, in this his first outing of the year, was a few good swings from each round to get him back into some sort of form for another tough year.
However, the real story here was Daniel Hillier, who came so close to claiming that first prize and the winner’s cheque of US$1.5million. Daniel led for much of, in fact most of, the last three rounds, following his brilliant 7 under 65 on Day 2 which shot him to the top of the leaderboard at the halfway stage. He hung onto that lead during the third round. The final round became a bit of a shootout between Tyrell Hatton and Hillier. In the end Hatton bettered Hillier by a couple of shots, shooting a 3 under 69 to Daniel’s 1 under par 71. The Kiwi was let down by a couple of poor greenside chips from admittedly thick rough, but his inability to get up and down from little more than 5-6 meters proved costly.
However, Daniel walked away with US$900,000. Quite apart from that being the biggest pay cheque of his professional career, a number of other benefits will flow from that runner-up performance. His world ranking will take a jump forward, and he also now sits in second place on the Race to Dubai points table. This is the rich end-of-year DP World Tour finale in Dubai worth millions to the winner. Maybe, above all of the rest, is the enormous confidence he will take from this showing. With a purse of US$9million it attracted big names from all round the world, even a handful of LIV golfers were eligible to play and of course one of them, Tyrell Hatton, won the event. Not so lucky was fellow LIV golfer John Rahm who missed the cut. Also in the field was Rory McIlroy, multiple winner of the this event, Tommy Fleetwood and Patrick Reed. For Daniel Hillier to finish second in a field of this quality means he can now foot it with the best in the world.
However golf can be a very fickle game.
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