Some of the best players in the game are teeing it up at this week’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. While the BMW PGA is without a doubt the DP World Tour’s flagship event, it is not the season finale.
The last two events of the season are scheduled for November in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. But there’s a major problem with that plan: both locations have been under attack from Iran since its war with the United States broke out in February.
Tour officials have said they are still committed to holding the tournaments as scheduled, but questions have been raised about whether they should be moved or canceled.
If they do go forward, at least one star player is considering skipping those events due to safety concerns: 2022 U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick.
Matt Fitzpatrick on season-ending events: ‘Frustrating that the decision hasn’t been made’
The final two events of the 2026 DP World Tour season are the Abu Dhabi Championship in Abu Dhabi and the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. Both cities are part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and both have suffered repeated attacks from Iran over the past several months.
Ensuing security concerns caused Formula 1 to cancel two races, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, earlier in the year. The question now is whether the DP World Tour will follow suit and cancel or relocate two of its own events.
During his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday at the BMW PGA Championship, Fitzpatrick, who won last year’s DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, revealed he would not be “comfortable” returning to defend his title this year. He cited the birth of his first child this year as one of the reasons.
“Being completely honest as things stand right now, I would say I’m not that comfortable. No, I wouldn’t be that comfortable,” Fitzpatrick said on Wednesday. “A few things have obviously changed for me, perspective and stuff. I’ve had a child in August, and that obviously kind of changes things, I guess, a bit more.”
He also revealed a mistrust of news reporting about the Iran war, especially in the U.S. But he did allow for some hope that the situation could improve between now and November.
“I think just in case — in the case of what you read on news, I know the news, where you get your news isn’t always — can be very one-sided, particularly in the U.S.,” Fitzpatrick explained. “But I think for me, as things right now, it would feel a little bit weird, given what I’m reading elsewhere. Things can change overnight, I’m sure. I think it seems to be going down that path of things are getting better. I’ve sort of looked on the U.K. website, I know they he changed from essential travel only to one step better than that.”
Fitzpatrick then expressed frustration that the DP World Tour had not yet made a final decision on whether to cancel the events.
“Obviously I know the tour has been on this for a long time. It’s obviously frustrating that the decision hasn’t been made so you can plan what’s going on. But I understand there’s obviously a lot of moving parts to that, and it’s obviously difficult to make these decisions,” Fitzpatrick said.
He later claimed the tour first said they would make a decision on the UAE events in June and argued the tour had been “vague” throughout the process.
“I feel like it’s been very vague the whole time and they have not necessarily kind of had open communication, I would say,” Fitzpatrick said.
Finally, he reiterated that if the DP World Tour decides to go forward with the events, he still wouldn’t be “keen” to travel to the UAE to play them.
“I think if the tour do go, I’m sure they have had the best advice possible on what that looks like,” Fitzpatrick said. “As things stand right now, I wouldn’t necessarily be too keen on going.”
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