Forget joint leader Tommy Fleetwood, world No 1 Dustin Johnson or four-time major winner Rory McIlroy, the golfer everyone was talking about at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, presented by EGA, on Thursday was Abu Dhabi schoolboy Oscar Murphy.
A pupil at British School Al Khubairat, Oscar, 13, was the winner of a skills challenge from the HSBC Future Falcons golf programme, and his reward was to hit a tee shot on the 15th tee. Mid-tournament. Alongside his hero. With thousands watching live, millions on TV, and following tee shots from McIlroy, Fleetwood and Johnson.
If he was nervous he certainly fooled us, sticking his shot 10 feet from the hole, closer than both Fleetwood and Johnson, leading to raucous cheers from the surrounding spectators.
“I was standing by the side of the tee box waiting to hit my shot and my legs were going off on me,” Oscar said. “It was unreal.”
A huge fan of McIlroy, Oscar has been following his fellow Northern Irishman since he was five years old. So intently, in fact, that McIlroy recognised him as he climbed through the ropes and even refers to him as his “little mascot”.
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Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship:
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“He's been following me, because he's from Northern Ireland, since the 2011 PGA Championship in Atlanta and he's like every round I play here. I feel like he's my little mascot,” McIlroy said after his round.
“He's waiting at the back of every green and every tee box. Was a little surprised to see him on the tee there. I didn't expect him to be inside the ropes today but he hit a really great shot, a really good little swing, one for the future.”
Oscar was only told on Wednesday that he would be playing alongside McIlroy. So did the former world No 1 have any words of encouragement?
“He was in tournament mode but after he came up to me and said ‘good shot’ and was talking to me all the way down the hole,” said Oscar, who is a regular at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club. “It was unbelievable.”
After going toe-to-toe with the best players in the world over one shot, Oscar’s big aim is to be one day compete against his hero professionally.
He already has a couple of new high-profile fans. Former England cricketer Andrew Flintoff and former British No 1 tennis player Tim Henman - at the tournament as HSBC ambassadors - posed for photos with Oscar, both clearly keen to be seen with the man of the hour.
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Company profile
Name: Thndr
Started: October 2020
Founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: pre-seed of $800,000
Funding stage: series A; $20 million
Investors: Tiger Global, Beco Capital, Prosus Ventures, Y Combinator, Global Ventures, Abdul Latif Jameel, Endure Capital, 4DX Ventures, Plus VC, Rabacap and MSA Capital
Find the right policy for you
Don’t wait until the week you fly to sign up for insurance – get it when you book your trip. Insurance covers you for cancellation and anything else that can go wrong before you leave.
Some insurers, such as World Nomads, allow you to book once you are travelling – but, as Mr Mohammed found out, pre-existing medical conditions are not covered.
Check your credit card before booking insurance to see if you have any travel insurance as a benefit – most UAE banks, such as Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, have cards that throw in insurance as part of their package. But read the fine print – they may only cover emergencies while you’re travelling, not cancellation before a trip.
Pre-existing medical conditions such as a heart condition, diabetes, epilepsy and even asthma may not be included as standard. Again, check the terms, exclusions and limitations of any insurance carefully.
If you want trip cancellation or curtailment, baggage loss or delay covered, you may need a higher-grade plan, says Ambareen Musa of Souqalmal.com. Decide how much coverage you need for emergency medical expenses or personal liability. Premium insurance packages give up to $1 million (Dh3.7m) in each category, Ms Musa adds.
Don’t wait for days to call your insurer if you need to make a claim. You may be required to notify them within 72 hours. Gather together all receipts, emails and reports to prove that you paid for something, that you didn’t use it and that you did not get reimbursed.
Finally, consider optional extras you may need, says Sarah Pickford of Travel Counsellors, such as a winter sports holiday. Also ensure all individuals can travel independently on that cover, she adds. And remember: “Cheap isn’t necessarily best.”
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Results
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
