By rights, the penultimate event of the European Tour season should be an important signpost on the Race To Dubai, but for a variety of reasons there's nobody in this week's field who can catch the front-running Francesco Molinari at next week's denouement and as a consequence, the Italian is just about home and hosed.

Such is Molinari's lead that he didn't feel the need to play in Turkey last week nor at Sun City this, and Tommy Fleetwood has all but given up pursuit of his Ryder Cup team-mate. He can still just about do it with victory in the gulf but would need help and while some will wonder why he's not therefore in South Africa for the Nedbank Golf Challenge, how many of us would say our careers are more important than our families?

Justin Rose has danced just about every dance this year and been rewarded with two brief spells at world number one, a position which will return to Brooks Koepka by default at the conclusion of this week's events. Rose would've needed a maths whizz and a crystal ball to forecast this scenario and while he was born in South Africa, truth be told it's no surprise he's chosen not to return, even after the realisation that he won't be top for long had dawned.

Clearly, the European Tour need to re-think the schedule and the scoring system if they're to create a finale as exciting as that which the PGA Tour have managed. It's asking much - in fact it's asking too much - for everyone to go from China to Turkey to South Africa to Dubai in four straight weeks, especially in a Ryder Cup year, and that means the battle for season-long honours is fragmented.