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From Hawaii to Dubai via a pitstop in Dallas, Robert MacIntyre has arrived here for his first DP World Tour appearance of the season feeling surprisingly refreshed. 

The Oban globetrotter spent his first two weeks of 2025 Stateside for the PGA Tour’s Hawaii swing, but is now back on more familiar ground at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic.

“When I woke up from a nap on the flight from Dallas to here, which was 14 or 15 hours, and I looked at the clock and still had ten hours left to go I was thinking ‘what am I doing?” he laughed after arriving at the spectacular Emirates Club.

“But I love this place and it is worth coming. I’ve been rested up and have been playing great golf.”

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MacIntyre – a self confessed “lone wolf” out on the PGA Tour – has returned to the Middle East after the best season of his career. Memorable victories at the Canadian and Scottish Opens have dramatically shifted the expectation levels heading in to 2025.

But that’s not something the 28-year-old is fussed about.

“The expectation changes all the time and more critics, more this, more that,” he told a small group of reporters on Wednesday. “But, at the end of the day, it’s all down to me and the team around me.

“You don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from. The people I have in my time are the ones I’ll take criticism from and I’ll take criticism from family. Other than that, I couldn’t give a damn.”

MacIntyre’s stock has risen to the extent that he now commands featured group coverage across both tours that he plays on. In the opening two rounds of this particular $9million showpiece, he will play in a stellar threeball alongside Adam Scott and Jon Rahm.

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“It gives you a level where you are fully switched on from the get go,” MacIntyre said. “You’ve got a bit more of a buzz, you’ve got a crowd. Early last year on the PGA Tour, I was like ‘am I getting finished today?’ But now you are in the big groups, you feel from the start there is an energy and I think as a player you need to feed off that.”

MacIntyre does not put pressure on himself by setting specific goals but the target has become clear for 2025; having a say in the majors. MacIntyre knows he is good enough to improve on his three top-ten finishes in the game’s career defining events.

“Now the majors are the ones I am trying to win,” he added, “I’m in them all this year. They are not going to be shocks to the system in terms of the players you are playing against because you are playing against them week in, week out on the PGA Tour.

“You are getting more comfortable, so (winning majors) becomes possible.”


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Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.

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