The Hero Dubai Desert Classic – the first of five Rolex Series events on the DP World Tour in 2025 – gets under way this week, with a whole host of former Challenge Tour players set to tee it up at Emirates Golf Club.
In total, 106 of the 126-strong field are Challenge Tour alumni, with seven former Challenge Tour Number One’s amongst them, including 2024 champion Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen. The Dane will make his Rolex Series debut having enjoyed a stellar 2024, where he won three times on the Challenge Tour in his first full season as a professional to climb into the world’s top 100.
Italian duo Francesco Laporta and Andrea Pavan, Portuguese Ricardo Gouveia and Englishmen Nathan Kimsey, Jordan Smith and Tommy Fleetwood are the six other Challenge Tour Ranking winners to join the field, with Fleetwood earning graduation back in 2011 where he became the youngest winner of the Rankings in the Tour’s history.
Fleetwood’s countryman John Parry is another from the 2024 graduate class in the Dubai-showpiece field. He capped a remarkable 12 months – where he matched Neergaard-Petersen’s three Challenge Tour wins – by returning to the DP World Tour’s winner’s circle for the first time in 14 years with victory in the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open at the end of December.
The 38-year-old has been in imperious form since returning to golf’s Global Tour and arrives in Dubai at the summit of the Race to Dubai Rankings following his win and two other top tens in just four starts.
New Zealand’s Daniel Hillier, Northern Irishman Tom McKibbin and Englishmen Matthew Baldwin and Todd Clements all secured victories on the DP World Tour immediately after their promotion from the Challenge Tour in 2022, with all four going in search of a first Rolex Series win this week.
Six-time DP World Tour winner and Ryder Cup star, Tyrrell Hatton, currently has four Rolex Series titles to his name, with the 2013 graduate looking to add to that list having picked up his last in 2021 in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
