Former CU golfer Yannik Paul, looking to return to top 100 in the world, opens 2024 with 8th-place showing vs. strong field on DP World Tour
By Gary Baines – 1/14/2024
Due more to lack of competition than anything else — he hadn’t played tour golf since before Thanksgiving — Yannik Paul has barely fallen out of being ranked among the top 100 golfers in the world, a position he’s become accustomed to recently.
But this week at a Dubai Invitational in which Tommy Fleetwood edged world No. 2 Rory McIlroy for the title, the former University of Colorado golfer looked like a guy determined to return to the top 100.
In his first DP World event in almost two months, Paul tied for eighth place on Sunday. And that was despite a final hole where he made double bogey after hitting two straight balls in the water on the par-4 18th at Dubai Creek Resort.
Prior to that, Paul had gone bogey-free for 28 straight holes.
The showing marked the 14th top-10 finish in the DP World Tour career of Paul, whose lone tour victory came 15 months ago at the Mallorca Golf Open.
Paul, who very well could represent Germany in the men’s Olympic golf tournament in August in Paris, went 64-70-69-69 for a 12-under-par total in Dubai. That left the 29-year-old seven strokes behind champion Fleetwood, who birdied the last two holes to overtake McIlroy.
Paul’s performance earned him 53,982 euros.
For all the scores from the Dubai Invitational, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. He was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com