Everything will be so familiar to Rory McIlroy: the course, the stakes, the pressure.
For Eugenio Chacarra, it’s all new territory.
The 2026 golf season on the European tour reaches its climax this week with a traditional trip to the Earth course at Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai for the 50 leading players on the points list.
So much is still up for grabs: a $3 million check for winning the year-end tournament; the season-long Race to Dubai title; and, for 10 players, a career-changing ticket to the PGA Tour.
Most excitement surrounds the fight to be crowned the year’s No. 1 player on the European tour, a contest — once called the Order of Merit but now labeled the Race to Dubai — that McIlroy has dominated for the past 15 years.
He is involved again this season, with McIlroy sitting second in the standings behind Chacarra and knowing a fourth career victory at the World Tour Championship will see him win the season-long prize for an eighth time, tying the record with Colin Montgomerie. McIlroy has won it the last four years, too.
Chacarra, a 26-year-old Spaniard in his first full season on the tour, leads McIlroy by nearly 534 points. American player Patrick Reed is third, a further 181 points back and the last of the top title contenders.
Some 2,000 points are on offer for the winner at Jumeirah Golf Estates, with 1,335 for second place, 752 for third place, 600 for fourth, and 509 for fifth.
The only way for Chacarra to guarantee finishing in first place is to win. For the Spaniard, it seems to be a direct fight between him and McIlroy.
“He’s the No. 2 player in the world and the No. 1 in Europe,” Chacarra said of the most recent player to complete the career Grand Slam in golf. “And he’s been doing it for a long time and he plays really good out in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. He has played that course a million times, and I only played it once.
“Obviously,” said Chacarra, a three-time title winner this season, “the odds are on him and he’s the favorite. But we’ll play golf. We know what I’m capable of when I am playing good.”
Finishing third at the Abu Dhabi Championship last week lifted McIlroy above Reed in the Race to Dubai standings and means he'll be with Chacarra in the final pairing setting out in Thursday's first round.
“That’s where I wanted to be,” McIlroy said. “It’s a pretty familiar spot for me going into the DP World Tour Championship and I’m excited for it.”
Reed's two wins this season came at the Dubai Desert Classic in January and the Qatar Masters in February. His form has dipped in recent weeks since an injury-prompted withdrawal midway through the BMW PGA Championship in September, with his last three results being a missed cut in Spain, a T23 in India, and a T43 out of 70 players in Abu Dhabi last week.
Some players below the top three have a slim chance of winning the Race to Dubai, but they need to win and for Chacarra and McIlroy to finish way down the leaderboard.
One of them is Rahm, whose victory in Abu Dhabi on Sunday lifted him to sixth place — around 1,700 points behind Chacarra.
“Actually gives me a little extra incentive,” Rahm said. “I really didn’t think I was going to have a chance.”
Whatever happens this week, Chacarra and Reed have secured one of the 10 places on next season's PGA Tour available to European tour members who are not otherwise exempt.
Making up the current 10 are Casey Jarvis, Jayden Schaper, Daniel Hillier, Jakob Skov Olesen, Bernd Wiesberger, Andy Sullivan, Oliver Lindell and Joe Dean.
Lindell and Dean, Nos. 9 and 10 in the non-exempt list, are most vulnerable heading to Dubai.
See AP’s full golf coverage here
Patrick Reed of the United States hits off the first tee during the first round of Abu Dhabi Golf Championship in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
Eugenio Chacarra of Spain hits off the first tee during the first round of Abu Dhabi Golf Championship in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland reacts on the seventh hole during the final round of the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
For the first time since February, Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators are scheduled to hold talks on ending the full-scale war that is nearing the five-year mark, with security guarantees topping the agenda.
The two-day session starting Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, follows previous negotiations early this year that failed to produce any visible progress toward ending Europe’s most devastating conflict since World War II.
The talks follow last month's localized truce around the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in southern Ukraine that was brokered with the help of U.S. first lady Melania Trump and allowed the evacuation of some of its residents and the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian supplies.
But even as Moscow and Kyiv touted the weeklong ceasefire as a positive model, fierce fighting has continued along the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line. Both sides also have escalated their long-range attacks on each other with drones and missiles.
Russia has intensified its strikes on Ukraine’s power system, seeking to undermine the country’s resolve as winter sets in. Moscow has relied on ballistic missiles and new, faster jet-powered drones, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.
A look at the talks and what's on the agenda:
Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on key elements of any prospective peace deal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to pull its troops back from the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He also demands that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO, accept strict limits on its military and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
Putin wants a comprehensive peace deal on those conditions and won't agree to a general halt in hostilities, arguing such a pause would only allow Ukrainian troops to rest and replenish their weapons stockpiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejects Putin’s demands to voluntarily cede territory Russia has not been able to take on the battlefield and agree to limits on the military and arrangements with Western partners, which it sees as essential security guarantees to stop Moscow from invading again.
Ukraine argues that an immediate ceasefire is the first step toward negotiating a wider settlement and says a direct meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is the only way territorial issues can be settled.
Russia and Ukraine said the talks will focus on security guarantees.
Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine and its allies have discussed security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5, which states the alliance sees an attack on one of its members as an attack against all.
In a Nov. 5 interview, he said Ukraine's security guarantees boil down to what Western allies would do if Russia launches a new invasion of his country. “If Russia starts again, what will happen?” Zelenskyy asked. “Who will do what, with what means, and when?”
Some European nations have mulled a possible deployment of their troops to Ukraine after a prospective peace deal. Russia rejects that as a nonstarter, warning it would view any European troops on Ukrainian soil as legitimate targets.
The Kremlin insists any prospective deal should also offer security guarantees for Russia. Just before Moscow launched the all-out invasion in 2022, it demanded that NATO roll back its deployments in the alliance's member countries in Central and Eastern Europe, seeing their presence as a security threat. Similar demands will likely be part of any comprehensive peace deal proposed by Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday that Moscow and Kyiv are “very close” to a deal but added that “they’re going to end up with a little bit different shape Ukraine.”
He also declared after meeting Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev Nov. 4 at the White House that some kind of grand deal about European security was in the works, although he did not elaborate.
“It’s going to be a big agreement and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine,” Trump said, adding that it might include all of Europe.
Ukraine insists its European allies must have a seat at the negotiating table, while Russia opposes any such involvement at this stage.
“No one is going to invite them to the negotiating table,” Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov snapped when asked if European envoys could join the Abu Dhabi talks. He added that if they fly there, they won't be allowed into the room.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Europeans would need to be involved in broader negotiations but only later.
“Since the discussion will touch upon the future security architecture in Europe while addressing the mutual security of Russia and Ukraine, at some stage it would be impossible to do it without the Europeans,” he said.
On Oct. 27, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke by phone with Putin in their first known direct conversation since shortly after the 2022 invasion. They said they spoke in their capacity as the heads of Russia's Nordic neighbors and not on behalf of the European Union, which has struggled to pick a negotiator with Moscow.
Peskov sarcastically noted that EU members “can’t even decide yet who is authorized to speak on their behalf,” calling it “a protracted indecisiveness and a lack of readiness on its part.”
On Nov. 4, Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he had held a 90-minute conversation with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, saying the talks “must move forward at full throttle to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible.”
Kushner said on X that “our objective is to develop practical arrangements that address the security concerns of all sides, reduce the risk of future conflict, and create a more stable and predictable security environment.”
For over 30 years, “Europe and Russia have struggled to establish a sustainable security framework,” Kushner wrote. “Decades of mistrust, competing security concerns, and the devastating consequences of this war make this an extraordinarily difficult challenge, but one that is essential to lasting peace.”
He noted the main goals of the talks were “permanent security consultations, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency, reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks, and an enduring framework for long-term European security and stability.”
Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russia’s delegation in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022 and in subsequent sessions, remains Moscow’s chief negotiator.
A former culture minister who wrote books about purported Western plots against Russia over the centuries, Medinsky is known for his hard-line views and blustery statements. At the 2025 talks, also in Istanbul, he reportedly said it took Peter the Great 21 years to defeat Sweden in the 18th century and Moscow was now ready to fight as long as it takes.
The Russian team also includes deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and deputy chief of the General Staff's operational department Yuri Zhigarlovsky.
Ukraine’s delegation is led by Rustem Umerov, head of the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service, who attended earlier talks. It also reportedly includes Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov, his deputy Sergiy Kyslytsya, chief of the general staff Andrii Hnatov and Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary faction leader of Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party.
A family member cries beside the coffins of Viktor Fomenko, Natalia Karapetian and Andrii Anikin, killed in a Russian airstrike that destroyed an underground school in Komyshuvakha, during a farewell ceremony in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Black crows circle above the statue of Archangel Michael, Kyiv's patron saint, during blackouts caused by Russian air attacks on Ukraine's energy system in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, an Orthodox Christian monastery is damaged following Russian aerial guided bomb strikes that killed at least 43 in Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attend a press conference in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Firefighters walk at the site of a destroyed warehouse after a Russian drone attack in Sofiivska Borshchahivka, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)
