It's a big week for the Challenge Tour in more ways than one.
Today's Dubai Festival Challenge Tour Grand Final hosted by Al Badia Golf Club, to give it its official name, must be one of the biggest, breathless titles of the campaign. Brevity was long since smacked out of bounds in the wordy world of golf.
It's a sprint to the finish in the Middle East and Andrew McArthur will be hoping to mount a final promotion push in the second-tier circuit's closing event of the season. At No.20 on the tour's rankings, the 35-year-old Scot needs to break into the top-15 on the money list if he is to make the step up to the main European Tour for the first time since 2010.
McArthur is some €5669 short of the promised land heading into the 45-man shoot-out but with a purse of €350,000 on offer there is plenty of scope for producing a lucrative late show.
McArthur was a winner on the Challenge Tour in Slovakia earlier this season and also enjoyed a second place finish in Brittany last month but it is a measure of the strength of the circuit that the Glasgow man still finds himself playing catch up.
The former Scottish Amateur champion was also sixth in China two weeks ago before letting a strong position slip in Oman recently when he closed with rounds of 73 and 77 to drop down to 15th and lose out on vital promotion pennies.
Scott Henry, who has been juggling bit and pieces on both the Challenge and European Tours and was second in May's dual-ranking Madeira Islands Open, needs an even bigger grandstand finish to haul himself all the way up from 21st on the money list.
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