Sergio Garcia hopes to upset Rory McIlroy in Race to Dubai

Sergio Garcia, with wins in the European Tour’s final two events of the season, would upset Rory McIlroy’s presumed crowning as the king of the Race to Dubai — and the 19-time Euro and PGA Tour winner is pleased just to be in the running.

McIlroy, with two major championships and wins at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and BMW PGA Championship on his impressive 2014 resume, skipped the Euros’ two “Final Series” tourneys in China but would seem to have an insurmountable lead for his second tour title in three years. Garcia, Jamie Donaldson, and Marcel Siem are the only players with mathematical chances of pulling a major upset and Sergio, for one, was more than willing to give McIlroy his due.

“I’m a big believer that if you have done something extraordinary to be able to achieve that, to win [The Race to Dubai] before the last tournament happens, why shouldn’t you be the winner,” Garcia told reporters ahead of this week’s Turkish Airlines Open, the next-to-last tourney on the schedule.

Garcia has had his own stellar season — including second-place finishes to McIlroy at the British Open and Bridgestone, and winning in Qatar to end a drought of two-plus years without a victory. But he would have to top the field in Turkey, which will also be sans McIlroy, and capture next week’s DP World Tour Championship in Dubai to pull off the upset.

Going back-to-back to end the European Tour season is not without precedent (Peter Oosterhuis did it in 1974 and Baldovino Dassu repeated the accomplishment in 1976). Even so, Garcia recognized he had an uphill battle if he were to pull off the feat.

“I think Rory did something quite extraordinary this season and this summer more than anything, and maybe he deserves to be The Race to Dubai Champion, even before we play the Dubai World Championship next week,” Garcia said. “There’s no doubt that it’s nice to be a part of it, to have still a little chance of winning it.”

The variables are many for McIlroy, who will play in Dubai after a six-week layoff, to lose his first-place standing. One of the three contenders would have to run the table and then the ciphering begins.

For Donaldson — the closest challenger in points to the four-time major winner — to grab the title, McIlroy would have to finish lower than fifth, according to the European Tour. McIlroy would have to finish lower than 17th for Siem to come out on top.

Garcia would hoist the trophy if McIlroy finished no better than seventh.

“It’s obviously very difficult, but to at least be in the race for it and have a possibility of becoming the Race to Dubai champion, it’s something that you look forward to and I’m going to need a couple of really, really good weeks,” Garcia added. “We’ll try it until it’s over.”