2026 DP World Tour Championship Round 2 Leaderboard: McIlroy, Hatton Tied

Rory McIlroy and Tyrrell Hatton share the lead after round 2 of the 2026 DP World Tour Championship at five under par in Dubai on Friday, November 13. Joost Luiten and Kristoffer Reitan are one back. Leading here at halfway has been close to worthless, though. Fourteen players have led or shared the 36-hole lead since 2016 and one of them won. What has mattered is being close, and ten players are.

Who leads the DP World Tour Championship after round 2?

Rory McIlroy and Tyrrell Hatton lead the 2026 DP World Tour Championship at five under after 36 holes on the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates. McIlroy shot 70 on Friday and Hatton shot 69. First-round leader Joost Luiten fell back with a 73 and is tied for third with Kristoffer Reitan at four under.

McIlroy’s 70 was two rounds in one. He was four under for the day through 11 holes and looked ready to run away with it, then gave most of it back with bogeys at the 12th, 16th, and 17th. A birdie at the par-five last got him back to five under. “It’s nice to birdie the last and feel like I salvaged the day a little bit,” he told Sky Sports.

Nobody is going low. Five under is the highest score to lead this event at halfway in the last 11 editions, and by a distance. Every 36-hole lead from 2016 to 2025 was between nine and 12 under.

The table below shows the top of the 2026 DP World Tour Championship leaderboard after round 2 on Friday, November 13, plus the Race to Dubai contenders further down, as posted on the ESPN leaderboard at the end of play.

Position	Player	Round 1	Round 2	To par
T1	Rory McIlroy	69	70	-5
T1	Tyrrell Hatton	70	69	-5
T3	Joost Luiten	67	73	-4
T3	Kristoffer Reitan	70	70	-4
T5	Mikael Lindberg	72	69	-3
T5	Freddy Schott	69	72	-3
T5	Victor Perez	69	72	-3
T8	Jayden Schaper	74	68	-2
T8	Jon Rahm	71	71	-2
T8	David Puig	70	72	-2
T11	Eugenio Chacarra	72	71	-1
T28	Tommy Fleetwood	76	71	+3
49	Patrick Reed	75	77	+8

Does the 36-hole leader win the DP World Tour Championship?

Almost never. In the ten DP World Tour Championships from 2016 to 2025, 14 players led or shared the lead after 36 holes and only Nicolai Højgaard in 2023 went on to win, according to the Betsperts DP World Tour database. The other nine winners were all chasing on Friday night.

It gets worse for McIlroy and Hatton when you split it up. Seven of those 14 led alone, and Højgaard is the one who finished it off. The other seven were sharing the lead, across 2016, 2021, and 2022, and none of them won. Hatton knows this better than anyone in the field. He was tied for the 36-hole lead here in 2022 at 12 under, alongside Matt Fitzpatrick, and finished second behind Jon Rahm.

The table below lists each DP World Tour Championship winner from 2016 to 2025 with his position and deficit after 36 holes, from the Betsperts DP World Tour database as of November 13, 2026.

Year	Winner	Position after 36 holes	Shots behind
2016	Matt Fitzpatrick	T8	3
2017	Jon Rahm	T6	3
2018	Danny Willett	T2	1
2019	Jon Rahm	T2	3
2020	Matt Fitzpatrick	2	2
2021	Collin Morikawa	T6	2
2022	Jon Rahm	T5	4
2023	Nicolai Højgaard	1	Led
2024	Rory McIlroy	T2	1
2025	Matt Fitzpatrick	T13	6

So the lead is a bad predictor and the distance is a good one. Eight of the ten winners were within three shots at halfway, and nine were within four. Fitzpatrick coming from six back in 2025 is the outlier.

Who is still close enough to win in Dubai?

Ten players are within three shots of the lead after round 2 of the 2026 DP World Tour Championship, the range that produced eight of the last ten winners. Jon Rahm, at two under, is the last name inside it. Eugenio Chacarra is four back, a gap only Rahm in 2022 has made up from.

The table below sorts the 2026 field by shots behind McIlroy and Hatton after round 2 on November 13, next to how many of the ten winners from 2016 to 2025 stood in that spot after 36 holes.

After 36 holes	Winners from there, 2016 to 2025	Who is there in 2026
Leading or tied	1	McIlroy, Hatton
1 back	2	Luiten, Reitan
2 back	2	Lindberg, Schott, Perez
3 back	3	Schaper, Rahm, Puig
4 back	1	Four players at one under, Chacarra among them
5 back	0	Eight players at level par, Adam Scott among them
6 back	1	Andy Sullivan, Joe Dean
7 or more back	0	26 players, Fleetwood and Reed among them

More than half the field is past the point any winner in that stretch has come back from. Tommy Fleetwood is eight behind after opening with a 76. Patrick Reed shot 77 on Friday, is 13 back, and sits 49th of 50.

One caution on reading those old numbers too literally. Those leads were built at nine to 12 under, and this one sits at five under on a course that is playing much harder. When birdies are this scarce a three-shot gap is a bigger hill than it was in 2019. That helps the two men in front more than the history table suggests.

What does it mean for the Race to Dubai?

Rory McIlroy is in the best position of anyone chasing the 2026 Race to Dubai title, because a win on Sunday guarantees it and he shares the lead. It would be his eighth season-long title, tying Colin Montgomerie‘s record. Eugenio Chacarra still leads the standings and sits four shots behind him in the tournament.

Chacarra shot 71 on Friday and has not gone away. He does not have to beat McIlroy this week. His lead in the standings means McIlroy has to finish near the very top to pass him, and our page on what each player needs to win the Race to Dubai has the full math. Rahm needs to win the tournament and get help from both of them. Reed came in third in the standings and his chance is all but gone.

What it means for a bet

If you are looking at the live outright, the history says do not pay a premium for the word leader. McIlroy is the right favorite. He won this event from one back at halfway in 2024 and he has the most to play for. But a co-leader at a short price is exactly the bet that has lost here, seven times out of seven.

The better value usually sits one to three back. This year that group is Luiten, Reitan, Lindberg, Schott, Perez, Schaper, Rahm, and Puig, and Rahm is the one with a track record on this course. He won here three times, in 2017, 2019, and 2022, and came from three or four behind at halfway every time. We have not checked a live price at a book for this event, so this page does not quote one. If you are new to betting after a tournament starts, here is how in-play golf odds move between rounds.

Saturday is the day the picture usually clears up. Every winner since 2016 was within three shots after 54 holes, and our 54-hole history for the DP World Tour Championship has the year-by-year list. If you want to re-rank the weekend field yourself with scrambling and accuracy weighted up for a course playing this hard, this is how the Rabbit Hole model builder works.

A free Betsperts Golf subscription, all our tools and reports, and a 100 percent deposit match up to 100 dollars. Make your first 10 dollar deposit at ReBet with code BSG.

Frequently asked questions

When is round 3 of the 2026 DP World Tour Championship?

Round 3 of the 2026 DP World Tour Championship is Saturday, November 14, and the final round is Sunday, November 15. There is no cut, so all 50 players go out both days. Dubai is ten hours ahead of US Central time, which means the leaders finish on Saturday morning in the United States.

Has Tyrrell Hatton won the DP World Tour Championship?

No. Tyrrell Hatton has finished second twice in the window we track, to Matt Fitzpatrick in 2016 and to Jon Rahm in 2022, the year he shared the 36-hole lead. He also sat one shot off the halfway lead in 2024, level with McIlroy, the year McIlroy won.

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