Like a snowball gathering pace and scale as it cannons down the hill there was something inexorable about the way Justin Rose bowled into golf’s DP World Championship in Dubai to contest the European Tour finale. With Rory McIlroy in enforced abeyance while his body heals the tour was denied the game’s biggest needle-mover at its end-of-year party. A month ago Tommy Fleetwood was without a meaningful foe in pursuit of the Race to Dubai crown and then, as if by decree, Sergio Garcia triumphed on home soil in Spain and Rose went back-to-back in China and Turkey having not won a sausage since his Olympic triumph 15 months ago. Hands began to rub at Wentworth HQ and corks started popping in sponsors’ boardrooms. We had a fight on our hands, a Rose v Garcia reprise to sell on the back pages.