Rory McIlroy will be the clear favorite when he tees it up at this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, but he’ll be in the unfamiliar position of not being the clear longest hitter in his group come Thursday at the DP World Tour event.
That’s because the five-time major champ will be paired with Marco Penge, the British bomber who has won three DP World Tour titles in 2025. And it’s going to be hard for the two to avoid a driving contestespecially when they’re being asked about it heading into the tournament.
RELATED: Tour pro has perfect reaction to old Tiger Woods highlight being posted
For the record, Rory holds the edge in the season-long statistics with a driving distance average of 320.3 to Marco’s 319.19. And Nicolai Hojgaard actually leads in the category with a 321.5 average. But what separates McIlroy and Penge is how effective those long drives are.
Penge is second in strokes gained off the tee (+1.06) and he’s just one-hundreth of a point behind the leader, Jon Rahm, who has played in far fewer tournaments. McIlroy ranks third at +.89. And the two were very close in terms of giving the best responses to this game within a game this week as the two play together for the first time as the top two in the season-long Race to Dubai standings.
Stuart Franklin
“I don’t know,” Penge said when asked on Tuesday about who will hit it longer. “Obviously I want to be past him and I’m sure he wants to be hitting it past me. It will be a bit of a flex on that sort of thing. Bringing their best on the day will probably be the longest. We’ll see.”
And Rory gave this reasonable response on Thursday:
“I don’t know. He should be longer. He’s nine years younger than me.”
Fair point, Rory. And way to do some opposition researchespecially during election season!
Oh, yeah, there’s a third member of that marquee group in Abu Dhabi: Tyrrell Hatton, who ranks 78th on the DP World Tour in driving distance. Sorry, Tyrrell. Looks like you’ll be hitting all of your approach shots first for at least the first two days.
RELATED: The best golfer Halloween costumes & the next Rory McIlroy (?)