Chacarra Wins in India: a 63 in the Morning, a 70 in the Afternoon, and Top of the Race to Dubai

Update, October 18: Chacarra finished the job. He closed his third round on Sunday morning with a bogey-free 63, then shot 70 in the final round to win by two shots from Daniel Hillier, his third DP World Tour title of the season, and moved above Patrick Reed to the top of the Race to Dubai standings.

Eugenio Chacarra woke up in Delhi on Sunday leading the DP World India Championship by two shots, and needing to play 25 holes to win it. Play had been suspended for fading light on Saturday with the Spaniard four under through 11 holes of his third round and 14 under for the week, AP reports. His Sunday started at 6:35 a.m. local time with the last seven holes of round three, and the final round followed straight after. The reason sat four days back in the week: Wednesday’s rain wiped out four hours and fifty minutes, and the tournament had been chasing its own schedule ever since.

Why is the tournament a full round behind?

The backlog stacked up in layers. IANS reports the Wednesday rain delay cost the event four hours and fifty minutes, which pushed the second round into Saturday morning. The halfway cut fell at even-par 144 and 77 players made it, and by the time round three started there was never enough daylight left in the day for all of them. Only 26 of the 77 completed their third rounds on Saturday. Everyone else walked off in the dark with holes still to play, and the leaders walked off with the most golf left, because the tee times run in score order. The extreme case was further down the field: home player Om Prakash Chouhan had managed two holes of his second round before Friday’s suspension, so his Saturday ran to 34 holes. Chouhan finished it tied 30th at five under, the best-placed Indian in the field, and said his body felt very tight afterwards. Chacarra’s Saturday was shorter, but his Sunday was the inverse: the field’s longest day belonged to the man with the lead to protect.

How did Chacarra build the two-shot lead?

Steadily, then quickly. Rounds of 67 and 67 gave him the halfway lead at 10 under by one shot, and on Saturday afternoon he birdied four of his first seven holes to stretch it, Sky Sports reports. Joost Luiten, four under through 12 holes, and Angel Hidalgo, four under through 11, were his nearest challengers at 12 under when play stopped, with Daniel Hillier, Adrian Meronk and Scott Jamieson at 11 under. The course has form for Chacarra. He earned one of the biggest wins of his career in India last year, winning the Hero Indian Open while playing on an invitation, a result that converted his former LIV status into a full DP World Tour card. This week is the same country and a bigger stage, and he has talked about it in season terms rather than weekly ones. He said he needs his A-game to compete with Reed and McIlroy across the season, because those two never rest, Golf Channel reports. The Delhi week has already produced its share of running stories, from Min Woo Lee’s withdrawal with a stomach illness and back spasms to the Kisner row below.

What happened to McIlroy’s Saturday?

It fell apart in two clusters of holes. McIlroy had started the day well, completing a bogey-free second-round 68 in the morning and birdieing the first hole of his third round. Then he dropped four shots in as many holes from the third, and added back-to-back bogeys at the ninth and tenth, Sky Sports reports. He reached the suspension at four under through 15 holes, ten shots behind the leader. The week had opened with a public row about why he was in Delhi at all, after Kevin Kisner accused him on a podcast of chasing a reported $10 million appearance fee rather than growing the game. Whatever the motive, Saturday’s golf settled the week’s sporting argument: McIlroy arrived third in the Race to Dubai and chasing an eighth season title to equal Colin Montgomerie’s record, and he spent Sunday as a spectator to the race’s new shape, too far back to affect it, finishing tied 42nd at four under. Patrick Reed, the man who started the week top of the standings, was eight back at six under when Saturday ended and finished at eight under, which leaves the season title rearranged by the man who won in Delhi.

Why did a 25-hole Sunday change the contest?

Fatigue and sequence, in that order. A final round normally starts with a clean pairing, a full warm-up and a leaderboard set in stone. Chacarra’s Sunday started before dawn’s effects had worn off, with seven holes that finished a round he began on Saturday afternoon, against Luiten and Hidalgo, who were in the same position and could close the gap before the final round even began. Then the groups were redrawn and he went again. A two-shot lead at a suspension is really two separate leads to defend: one over seven holes in the morning, one over eighteen in the afternoon. The season stakes raised the cost of a tired stretch. The win took Chacarra past Reed to the top of the Race to Dubai, weeks after the DP World Tour told LIV-linked players to choose over 2027 membership, and Chacarra’s own route to this tour ran through exactly that divide. He had already shown, on this same golfing ground in Delhi and in his Spanish Open win on a fractured toe, that discomfort does not move his scoring much. Sunday tested a different kind of discomfort: volume.

How did the 25 holes actually go?

The morning answered the fatigue question in seven holes. Chacarra came back out at the restart and closed his third round with three birdies and an eagle, signing for a bogey-free 9-under 63 and a five-shot lead at 19 under, the DP World Tour reports. The 63 matched the best round of the week. The lead he carried into the redraw was bigger than the one he had defended overnight, which changed the afternoon’s shape: the field now needed him to come back to it, and mostly he did not.

The afternoon was control rather than fireworks. Chacarra shot a 2-under 70 to finish at 21 under, and the closest anyone came was Hillier, who reached 19 under for second place after back-to-back 64s over the weekend, a charge that started from four over par after 13 holes of his opening round. Hidalgo and Meronk shared third at 15 under, and the group at 13 under included defending champion Tommy Fleetwood and Luiten. Chouhan, whose 34-hole Saturday had made him the home story of the week, finished at four under in the group tied 42nd, alongside McIlroy.

Chacarra was honest about the cost afterwards. “Last round was tough, really tiring, waking up three days in a row at 4am,” he told Sky Sports, in quotes GolfMagic carried. “My body wasn’t there, I didn’t feel good.” He also pointed the win at next September’s Ryder Cup at Adare Manor, where captain Luke Donald had taken him on a scouting trip two months earlier: he said he wants to be on that team through one of the automatic spots, not a pick. The nearer task is the season race he now leads. He confirmed he will play in Korea next week, with Reed and McIlroy chasing him into the two Middle East play-offs, and described the pair as two of the best players in the world who will not make it easy.