The 27-year-old heads into the $10 million Rolex Series event on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates in the United Arab Emirates sitting in the seventh card spot in a battle for ten tickets to play on the US circuit next season.

Adrian Meronk, Ryan Fox, Victor Perez, Thorbjorn Olesen, Alexander Bjork and Sami Valikmaki are the players currently in card-winning positions above MacIntyre while Jorge Campillo, Ryo Hisatsune and Rasmus Hojgaard are the others on course to secure PGA Tour playing privileges in 2024. Min Woo Lee and Nicolai Hojgaard have already secured that status through finishing in the top 125 in last season’s FedEx Cup, as has Vincent Norrman on the back of winning the Barbasol Championship in July.

While it’s not done and dusted yet for MacIntyre, the left-hander has decided he will be accepting the opportunity of dual membership before the deadline at the beginning of next month after coming to the conclusion that he needs to take the step if he wants to build on being part of a triumphant team in Rome in the Ryder Cup.

Bob MacIntyre gives someone the thumbs up during the DP World Tour Championship Pro-Am on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai. Picture: Oisin Keniry/Getty Images.

“There’s still a lot going on, but I’m a lot calmer about it,” he told The Scotsman in Dubai, having admitted both in the immediate aftermath of the win over the Americans in the Italian capital and back on home soil at the Dunhill Links that he wasn’t sure he could commit to having to live anywhere other than his beloved hometown on the west coast. “Everything is in line to see what needs to happen after Sunday. We’ll see where we stand and then pull the trigger whether we are on the DP World Tour or the PGA Tour. We have things set up for whatever way we need to go. I’m comfortable about it. I’m happy with the choices I’ve made so far and now the aim is to get back to playing good golf because good golf takes care of everything.”

MacIntyre has been working closely with his manager, Iain Stoddart, on identifying where would be the best place for him to be based in the US and, as has been the case with lots of European players over the years, including Ryder Cup team-mates Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry and Tyrrell Hatton, Florida is the location they’ve identified.

“It would be in the Orlando area, where there are good facilities and good people around,” added MacIntyre. “Yeah, it’s a big change. But, after sitting down with my team after the Dunhill, we re-looked at what I want to achieve in golf. Oban has got me so far and I believe you can do anything you want from being from Oban as long as you get the right support. But I feel like to get to my next goal, I’ve got to do things up a level.

“That’s the biggest thing. I’m going to sacrifice a lot trying to chase the next proper, proper goal I’ve got and I’m fine with that. I’m someone who if I set a goal, I go at it. I give it everything I’ve got and, if it comes off, it would be unbelievable as I could retire after it. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But I want to give it everything. I’d be devastated if I retired from golf and I thought ‘I regret not doing this or that’.

“When I went to the States for college golf (at McNeese State University in Louisiana), it was like ‘will you regret this if you don’t go and don’t make it on the DP World Tour?’ That’s why I gave it a shot and I enjoyed it and did well out there. I obviously came back earlier than people thought, but would I change it? No. Now I feel this is the next step I’ve got to take. Yes, there are sacrifices, but everything is in place to try and combat the feelings I am going to have.”

MacIntyre, who is flying the Saltire in the season finale along with Grant Forrest, Ewen Ferguson and Connor Syme, sits 11th in the Race to Dubai – the position he finished when being crowned as the Rookie of the Year in 2019 before then ending up 23rd, ninth and 18th since then. “This is my fifth season out here and I’ve done pretty good up to here,” he said. “I’ve done alright here as well in the past (including a tie for fourth in 2021). When you set out on a season and you’ve played a full DP World Tour schedule, this is your goal. You obviously want to win golf tournaments, but you also want to get to the final of the Race to Dubai.”

His only disappointment heading into the final four rounds of the season on this occasion is that the current campaign hasn’t yet produced a win. “Yip,” he said of that. “I feel like I’ve had three slip away. Kenya, Korea and Qatar definitely. But things have to go your way to win golf tournaments and I feel I’ve not had that to get over the line. For me, it’s about making sure I learn from it. I feel as though I have learned lot from Qatar (where he finished sixth last month). I wasn’t feeling my best out there. I had quite a few dizzy spells, which I think was down to it being melting hot and I couldn’t hydrate enough. But, on the Sunday, a few things changed and it’s about trying to stop that from happening.

“It didn’t change within the team; it changed within me. I wasn’t hitting the shots that I had been hitting in the first three days as I was thinking about the end outcome might be. Fine, that happens. But you have got to learn from it. If you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, it’s not going to happen.”

Bob MacIntyre set to swap Oban for Orlando if he secures his PGA Tour card

Comments