For the second time in four days, Tommy Fleetwood wrapped Aaron Rai in a bearhug at the end of a round of golf, and both players broke into broad smiles.
As they embraced on the 18th at Earth Course at the culmination of the first day of the DP World Tour Championship, Rai was moved to laughter – even though his day had been a tough one.
Rai carded a 1-over-par 73, leaving him languishing in 43rd out of 52 in the season finale at Jumeirah Golf Estates. Fleetwood, for his part, was eight shots better off, on 7-under, one shy of the Day 1 leader, Michael Kim.
It is unlikely Rai will lose too much sleep over it, given he is still basking in the glow of winning a cool $1.5 million as well as the Falcon Trophy in Abu Dhabi at the weekend.
But the giggles were telling. Maybe Fleetwood had told him he was nipping off to the loo.
It was a coincidence the two players had been paired together. Ahead of the start of championship, Fleetwood had had to defend himself against accusations of gamesmanship against Rai.
He had attracted criticism for delaying the start of the play-off that decided the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship on Sunday.
When quizzed about it on Tuesday, he pointed out that he had urgently needed a toilet break – hence heading into the clubhouse – and that Rai beat him anyway.
For a player commonly referred to as one of the most amiable on tour – not least with Rai, who could scarcely be more fulsome in his praise of Fleetwood – it was a shock.
The controversy, such as it was, was hardly a distraction for the Englishman. Fleetwood fired seven birdies – including five in the space of six holes at the start of the back nine, to position himself perfectly at the start of the championship.
It was the latest show of class from a player who is in the form of his life. Having won in the United States and India recently, he moved up to No 4 in the world after finishing second in Abu Dhabi.
“I'm on a really great run at the moment,” Fleetwood said. “My results have been really good. But I really think it's consistency of hard work in all areas. I'm very lucky with having great information from great people that are around me.
“We’ve been chipping away for a long time. We've played very consistently for a long time and now we're just having a great run.
“Hopefully it's not just a great run and this is how I play golf, but we've got to see what happens in the future.
“I am always trying to consistently improve day in, day out, no matter how little that step may be. Every now and again, you get lucky and it shows.”
It helps when it is your home track. Fleetwood has called Dubai home for some while now, and he has academies both there and in Abu Dhabi.
“It's been a dream of mine to have academies to bring the game of golf to as many people as possible,” Fleetwood said.
“I've lived at the elite end of the game for a long time, from a young age. I want to help people strive for their dreams in the game, and I want to help people get into the game and see the beauty of it.
“I'm very lucky that my name is on it, but I'm also very blessed with the people and the partners that are involved in that and we'll continue to try to grow.”
While Fleetwood is one shot in arrears of Kim, both will be wary of the fact Rory McIlroy is just one stroke further back on 6-under.
The Northern Irishman now appears certain to claim a seventh Race to Dubai title after his playing partner, Marco Pange, suffered a rare off day.
Penge needs to win the tournament to leapfrog McIlroy and win the order of merit, but was eight shots worse off than his playing partner of Day 1.
While it was an impressive round on the Earth Course for McIlroy, he felt it could have been even better.
“I don't want to sound like I'm that disappointed but I feel like I left a few out there; I missed a couple of short ones,” McIlroy said.
“Overall, it was a really solid start on a golf course that I'm very comfortable on and historically I've played very well on.”
PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
Desert Warrior
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rating: 3/5
Why seagrass matters
- Carbon sink: Seagrass sequesters carbon up to 35X faster than tropical rainforests
- Marine nursery: Crucial habitat for juvenile fish, crustations, and invertebrates
- Biodiversity: Support species like sea turtles, dugongs, and seabirds
- Coastal protection: Reduce erosion and improve water quality
Coming soon
Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura
When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Akira Back Dubai
Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
