Matt Wallace hits career-best 12-under round to lead DP World Tour Championship

DUBAI: Matt Wallace needed to shoot a bogey-free five-under par in tough conditions in the final round of Nedbank Challenge in South Africa last week just to get into the field for this week’s $10.5 million DP World Tour Championship.

On Saturday, he added another incredible chapter to his late surge, shooting a 12-under par 60 — the lowest round in the history of the tournament — to sensationally move to the top of the leaderboard.

The 33-year-old Englishman now has a chance to win the $3 million first prize, even though his 60 will not count as an official record because preferred lies was in play after Friday’s heavy rains in Dubai.

The leader was being chased by two of Europe’s biggest stars. England’s world No. 15 Tommy Fleetwood, who now lives and practices in Jumeirah Golf Estates, and Norway’s world No. 4 Viktor Hovland, were just one behind at 15-under par. Both shot rounds of 66.

Wallace, winner of this year’s Corales Puntacana Championship on the PGA Tour, was seething after missing a short birdie putt on the seventh hole, but he channeled it in the best possible manner.

After a birdie on the eighth hole and a par on the ninth, he made the turn at three-under, before going on his birdie blitz.

On the par-4 10th hole, the world No. 87 made a long 30-footer for birdie, and never took his foot off the accelerator after that. He had a chance to shoot a rare 59, but his second shot on the par-5 18th hole went just right into the greenside bunker and he could only salvage a birdie from there. An eagle would have given him only the second 59 on the DP World Tour after Oliver Fisher’s in the 2019 Portugal Masters.

Wallace said the thought of a possible 59 never entered his head, and that he realized how close