James Morrison was ready for this week to be his last in the world of professional golf. Golf had other ideas.
Morrison, 40, spent 15 years on the DP World Tour, winning twice, before losing his card after last season. He spent this year in the HotelPlanner tournament, but entered this week’s tournament HotelPlanner’s Rolex Tour Grand Final need a good finish to earn at least conditional status on the DP World Tour in 2026. The top 20 finishers secured full cards for next season, with another 10 gaining conditional status.
He was about to ride off into the sunset. But a fairytale ending has forced him to change his plans.
“When I said this would be my last event, it really would be, 100 per cent,” Morrison told Sky Sports on Sunday after a three-shot victory moved him to sixth in the Development Tour points table and guaranteed him a place on the DP World Tour next season. “It has completely confused him.”
With his 13-year-old son Finley in the bag, Morrison shot a seven-under 65 on Saturday to build a three-shot lead. When he woke up on Sunday, Morrison, who had been satisfied that this week was his swan song, had a different perspective with a win with his son in the bag 18 holes away.
“It’s funny that all week I had that attitude of ‘right, this could be the last one and I don’t really care,'” Morrison said. Scotsman. “But then this morning I started to care a little bit and I was like ‘wait a minute, this is not where I want to be’. I just tried to dig into the memory bank of years gone by and I managed to do that.”
Morrison got nervous early Sunday. He birdied the par-5 first and then bogeyed the second. But he stood his ground and then made three birdies in a four-hole stretch starting on the par-5 11th to extend his lead to four. But even with a big cushion, Morrison still felt the pressure on the 72nd hole.
“That swing on the last one, I couldn’t feel my arms. It went so far.” Morrison said that after bogeying the last hole to finish at 15 under to win by three. “I’m glad it’s over, let’s put it that way. But no, I played well all week. I didn’t play that well today, but I kind of managed my emotions, I dug into my memory bank and my DP World Tour wins and the wind that was blowing really helped me today because I knew the harder it got, the more it was going to play into my hands.”
Morrison’s first DP World Tour win came in 2009 as a rookie. He won the 2015 Spanish Open, which was his last win until he won earlier this season at the HotelPlanner Tour. Despite winning earlier in the year, Morrison struggled on the development tour this season. He lost nine of his first 10 cuts before winning in France. He missed five cuts and posted just one top-20 finish in the 12 events since then. He entered the week 36th in the points standings and had decided that spending another year on the development tour was not in the cards.
Instead, Morrison wrote a fairy-tale victory with his son in the bag, which meant more than a return to Europe’s top circuit.
“He did a lot,” Morrison said of his son Finley. “I had a birdie putt on 11 and he let out a big sigh. I was like ‘you nervous mate’ and he said ‘not really’ but I think he was feeling it, as we all were. He did brilliantly and hugging him on the 18th green was the most special thing in the world.”
Morrison has made 438 career DP World Tour starts. Before this week, it looked like that would be the final outcome. Now? There is more to come. How much more remains to be seen.
“I don’t have a caddy. I don’t have a tour bag, nothing. I can cancel my Waitrose email applying for a job. But we’ll have to wait and see,” Morrison said when asked how much he planned to play on his return to the DP World Tour.
That’s a concern for another day. A day Morrison never thought would come. But, as always, four good rounds can change everything.
