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Sergio Garcia hopes to take his pursuit of “quite extraordinary” Rory McIlroy to the last event of The Race to Dubai with victory in this week's Turkish Airlines Open presented by the Ministry of Youth and Sport.
The Spaniard requires victory at the Montgomerie Maxx Royal in Antalya and another at next week's DP World Tour Championship in Dubai in order to have any chance of preventing McIlroy winning The Race to Dubai for a second time in three seasons.
That Garcia is still in the hunt at all is testament to the 34 year old's form this season – having won in Qatar he has also amassed three runner-up finishes, two of them to McIlroy at The Open Championship and WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
As well as those wins McIlroy collected a second Major Championship of the year at the US PGA Championship and took The European Tour's flagship BMW PGA Championship, and Garcia was quick to praise his opponent for the European Number One crown.
“I'm a big believer that if you have done something extraordinary to be able to achieve that, to win [The Race to Dubai] before the last tournament happens, why shouldn't you be the winner,” said Garcia, who along with Jamie Donaldson and Marcel Siem is one of only three players with a chance to stop McIlroy heading into the penultimate event of The Final Series.
“I think Rory did something quite extraordinary this season and this summer more than anything, and maybe he deserves to be The Race to Dubai Champion, even before we play the Dubai World Championship next week.
“There's no doubt that it's nice to be a part of it, to have still a little chance of winning it.
“It's obviously very difficult but to at least be in the race for it and have a possibility of becoming The Race to Dubai Champion, it's something that you look forward to and I'm going to need a couple of really, really good weeks - we'll try it until it's over.”
Garcia missed the inaugural staging of this event last year, but was determined to come after hearing his fellow European Tour pros rave about the venue.
“I definitely have heard a lot of good comments,” added Garcia. “Obviously it's a fairly new tournament but a lot of good comments.
“It's one of the things that made my decision easier to come and play this year. I'm excited about seeing the course today - I heard it's in good shape. I heard the rough is a little bit high but it looks really, really good, and obviously the resort is quite spectacular, so we are enjoying that.”
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