Jordan Smith and Adrian Otaegui shared the lead after day one of the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai as Francesco Molinari tightened his grip on the European Tour’s season-long crown.
Smith and Otaegui carded rounds of 66 at Jumeirah Golf Estates to sit at six under, one shot clear of defending champion Jon Rahm and Major Championship winner Danny Willett.
Italian Molinari knows a tie for fifth with one other or better will secure him the Race to Dubai title and he was just a shot further back after a 68 on the Earth Course.
Defending champion Tommy Fleetwood needs a victory at the eighth and final Rolex Series event of the season to have any chance of denying Molinari, and the Englishman was three shots off the lead after a 69.
English pair Ross Fisher and Matt Wallace, Chinese Li Haotong and Belgian Thomas Pieters were alongside Molinari at four under.
Dylan Frittelli leads the way in terms of South Africans despite a double bogey 5 on the penultimate hole.
The two-time European Tour winner, who will defend his Mauritius Open title at the end of the month, started off with three birdies in a row before two more back to back at 13 and 14. He was left to rue his late stumble which followed a drop on the par 3 sixth.
One shot back in the group sharing 28th place was SA trio Erik van Rooyen, Branden Grace and Dean Burmester.
Of the three it was Burmester who went closest to matching Frittelli’s opening effort before he too succumbed to the penultimate hole. That double sent him back into the pack firing 71s on Thursday.
Brandon Stone made it a hat trick of Saffas to double the 17th as he joined Darren Fichardt with a 74.
