Bob MacIntyre going out 'all guns blazing' as he prepares to tackle one of his most problematic holes

The Oban man heads into the season finale sitting fifth in the Race to Dubai Rankings and, though unable to catch leader Rory McIlroy, he’s on course for a career-high finish on the points list.

Bearing in mind his points have come from just ten events - the same as McIlroy, who is bidding to finish the season as the circuit’s No 1 for the fourth year in a row and seventh time in total - it’s been a praiseworthy performance once again by MacIntyre.

“I’m delighted with my year,” he told The Scotsman at Jumeirah Golf Estates, where the $10 million Rolex Series event starts on Thusday. “Could I have done better? Of course, I could have. I’ve had a really decent major record year, which obviously helps with points for the Race to Dubai.

“I didn’t do well in the Genesis Scottish Open this year but did well in The Open. I’ve had a decent season. I don’t know if I even played half the events I would have played normally. I think it’s been a decent effort to get in the position I’m in and the next thing for me on here (the DP World Tour) is to try and win a Race to Dubai title.”

In six previous appearances at this venue, the world No 7 has recorded two top-ten finishes and not ended up worse than the top 35. He’d have done better, though, if he’d managed to play the par-5 18th, where a stream zig zags up the middle of the fairway in the landing area for tee shots, a bit more successfully.

‘I prefer the middle tee box’

“I just mentioned it walking off it,” he said, laughing, of it having been troublesome for him in the past. “Yeah, I prefer the tee box in the middle. I think it’s almost the fairest of the ones we use as I have actually got a target to hit. The back tee is okay, but it’s the forward one that causes me problem because the water snakes up the middle of the hole with not much fairway on either side.

“Yeah, it will be pretty much the same strategy as always on that forward tee, which is to aim at the water and absolutely smash it and hope that, if you are going up there with a lead, then it goes in the water with the tee shot.”

Is it his least favourite hole in golf? “There’s a few, to be honest,” he admitted with a huge smile. “It’s different when the water goes dead straight and you know where it is. It’s when it is going all over the place as you can hit what you think is a good shot and ask your caddie if he agrees then says ‘I don’t know!’

“But it’s a hole I’ve got to navigate and, depending on the situation , it will determine what I do. At the end of the day, if you make par on that hole it’s not bad. It’s the disasters that are waiting around the corner that you want to avoid.”

In his first event since winning the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on home soil in early October, MacIntyre finished joint-ninth behind Englishman Aaron Rai in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship at Yas Links last Sunday.

“Aye, it was decent, especially as I wasn’t feeling great when the week started due to catching some sort of bug,” he said. “To be honest, I was delighted to walk away with a top-ten finish. On Saturday, I didn’t even know if I was going to play golf. I was touch and go. But, at the end of the day, to come back from four weeks off and not touching the clubs too much and finish where I did in what was a big test was decent.

“It’s all about consistency. It’s about trusting what you are doing. Look, the team I’ve got around me is as good as it gets. I trust everyone of them. They know that when I am taking time off, that’s what I am doing. But, when I get back out here, it’s 100 per cent focus on the job at hand.”

‘I need to tweak things a little bit’

MacIntyre’s final event of the 2025 campaign will be a second appearance in the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas early next month before his focus will quickly turn to a 2026 season that will be heavily geared towards the four majors.

“I’ve always been good at taking time off, but I think I need to tweak it a little bit,” he added. “I need to have a structure in place. I was putting beautifully at the end of last year then came back out and it didn’t feel as good, which is because I was hardly touching the putter during my time off. So I need to tweak that a little bit and helps me better prepared for coming back out, though that is difficult in Scotland.

“It’s been a long season this one. I think it was the 27th December when I flew out to Hawaii and I feel I have been all guns blazing since then, but it’s been a great year.”

MacIntyre is flying the Saltire over the next four days in the UAE with Calum Hill, Grant Forrest, Ewen Ferguson and Connor Syme, with the quintet having an opportunity to create history by becoming the first Scot to win this event since its introduction in 2009.