Eugenio Chacarra spent Sunday in New Delhi doing the unglamorous thing well. He finished a weather-delayed third round with a 9-under 63, went straight back out, shot a closing 70 and won the DP World India Championship by two strokes on 21 under. The Associated Press report carried by the PGA Tour noted that the win, his third of 2026 after the KLM Open and the Open d’Italia, lifted the 26-year-old Spaniard past Patrick Reed and into first place in the Race to Dubai.
Anyone tracking the golf markets from the UK and wondering whether a welcome offer can be used on an outright bet at all can compare how those terms are written on Freebets UK, where the comparison pages flag which offers restrict tokens to selected markets. That is worth settling before Thursday, because the next event on the schedule is the last of the regular season.
A fortnight of near-misses, then a win
Chacarra arrived in India in form: third at the French Open, second at the Open de España a week earlier. He did not make it look comfortable. “The last round was tough, it was really tiring waking up three days in a row at 4 a.m.,” he said afterwards. “It’s hard to go in on a big lead, you don’t want to push but there are guys making birdies.”
Daniel Hillier was the only player to finish within five strokes of him. The New Zealander played the weekend in 64 and 67 for second place on 19 under, a result that moved him from 101st to 77th in the world rankings and into the Race to Dubai top ten. Adrian Meronk, fresh from winning the Alfred Dunhill Links, shared third on 15 under with Angel Hidalgo.
The headline name had a quieter week. Rory McIlroy shot 74 in the final round and tied for 42nd, four shots behind Reed, who finished on 8 under in a tie for 23rd. McIlroy did not use his driver all week. He still sits third in the Race to Dubai behind Chacarra and Reed, so the season-long race has three genuine contenders and a calendar that is nearly out of road.
Why Cheonan matters
The Genesis Championship runs from 22 to 25 October at Woo Jeong Hills Country Club in Cheonan, a par 71 designed by Perry Dye that hosted the Korea Open for two decades. The DP World Tour’s own preview describes it as the final event of the Back 9 and the last regular-season stop before the Play-Offs, with a $4 million purse in its tenth edition and a field of 126, made up of 36 players from the Korean tour and 90 from the DP World Tour.
The Play-Offs open at the Aldar Championship in Abu Dhabi, and only the top 70 in the Race to Dubai after this week get there. For the leaders that is a formality. For dozens of players further down, Cheonan is the last chance to climb inside the line. A winner takes 835 ranking points from the 5,000 on offer, which is enough to rearrange a mid-table season in four days.
Chacarra, Casey Jarvis and Jayden Schaper, all multiple winners this season, are in the field, alongside Ryan Fox, Jacob Skov Olesen, Nicolai Højgaard and home favourites Si Woo Kim and Sungjae Im. Winning the Race to Dubai would make Chacarra only the third Spaniard to be European Number One, after Seve Ballesteros and Jon Rahm.
The defending champion is Junghwan Lee, who began last year’s final round four shots behind, shot a 64 and won by three for his first DP World Tour title. No player has won the Genesis Championship twice, which is a thin precedent for a repeat, though Lee will have the Korean crowd behind him.
Andy Newmarch
Being one of the original owners of the ‘Top 100 Golf Courses’ website enabled Andy to travel far and wide playing and rating courses, with the numbers somewhere around 1200 courses in 40 countries. Although now away from the day-to-day grind of course ranking, having a keen eye on course developments is still high on the agenda. Currently hanging on to a handicap index of 8.1 he is probably as competitive on the course than ever but more often than not will compliment this by relaxing at the 19th hole to make up for the hard work!