The names vying for contention at the top of the Slync.io Dubai Desert Classic leaderboard read like a who’s who of the DP World Tour’s top golfers.
So high is the calibre of the field that even those just beyond striking distance of Justin Harding who leads the tournament on 12-under par - Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood - are major celebs.
Major winners Collin Morikawa and Adam Scott, level in 20th place on 4-under par after Round 3, will go off together at 10.35am in Sunday’s final round.
In the match just in front of them will be Shane Lowry, an Open champion, European Ryder Cup player and multiple winner on tour.
In the Irishman’s three-ball will be the only remaining amateur in the field, a teenager born and raised in Dubai who is playing in just his fourth DP World Tour event.
You might expect 17-year-old Josh Hill to feel intimidated by the stardust floating around him. But he is feeling not one bit of it. The Rolex Series? It feels more like a club championship, he said.
“There’s not much to think about,” Hill said, after carding a relatively stress-free 69 in Round 3.
“It is just another round. Just go play golf and see what happens. I feel like I normally do at a normal tournament, just with some bigger names around me.
“I haven’t let it affect me. I’m just playing like I would in a normal amateur tournament. [Thinking like] this is the club champs.”
Hill made history by becoming the first UAE-born player to make the cut in an Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, when he did so around Yas Links last week.
He will be heading to the Saudi International next week, so he is getting well used to sharing space on the driving range, as well as the tee-box, with the sport’s great and good.
Even though, the poise with which he had approached this week at the Classic has been startling. Ahead of the final round, his 3-under par total has him sharing 23rd.
His 69 on Saturday included, for the third day running, a shot dropped at the ninth – Friday’s concession at that hole was actually worse, a double-bogey.
It speaks much of Hill’s on-course equilibrium that he never threatened a Tyrrell Hatton-style strop about the difficulty of the par-4. Play better, and you will be rewarded, he said.
“I think it is the hardest hole on the course, but I think it is a fair hole, and if you hit a good shot you are going to get rewarded as well,” Hill said.
“I wouldn’t say I want to bomb it [as Hatton did at Yas a week earlier about the 18th – a hole he birdied on two of the days].
“I do think it is the hardest hole on the course, but I think it is still fair. Of course, I’d like to take it off my scorecard. Unfortunately that’s not possible.”
That bogey at the ninth was the prelude to three successive birdies after the turn. He made five across the round, with just the one further drop at 16.
“I hit it a lot better today than I did [in Round 2],” Hill said.
“I had the same amount of control of the ball as I did in the first round. The front-nine is a tough nine.
“Even though I three-putted nine and bogeyed it, I said to my caddie we could get it back on the back nine. I birdied three in a row, which was nice. Overall, I am pretty pleased with how I played. I made two silly mistakes but 3-under is 3-under.”
