Gonzalo Fernández-Castaño (+2) did not make the cut in the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. He shot a 72 in the second round, falling quite short of his objective. He knew it would be difficult, seeing as how he needed to shoot a 67, but his fate was sealed when, after starting out on the 10th hole, he made a bogey and a double bogey on the 14th and 15th holes.
The golfer from Madrid responded well to the situation with two consecutive birdies on the 17th and 18th holes, but on the following nine, he was only able to shoot pars. He had a few options for birdie, but he had too much work to do on a stretch of the course that is much more difficult.
It’s the fourth cut in a row that Gonzalo’s missed. It hasn’t happened since the summer of 2017 in the PGA Tour, when he missed the cut the weekend of the Travelers Championship and the RBC Canadian Open. To revert to a recurrence of the same events in the European Tour, we would have to go all the way back to 2011. That year, he missed the cut in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Qatar and Ireland. However, the first three were when he had a back injury that left him out for half a year, and Ireland was just after he came back.
But, just after those tournaments where he missed the cut four times in row, he pulled off what was quite possibly his best sequence as a professional. At the end of 2011, he had four big weeks with a second place (Castellón Masters), a fourteenth place (Andalucía Masters), a win (Singapore) and another second place in the Dunlop Phoenix.
It’s time to stop the bleeding in Arabia with next stop in Saudi International.
