World number 30 Rai led by one shot overnight, but a rollercoaster final day began with Fleetwood moving out in front after opening with a birdie and hitting an eagle at the par-five second.
Four successive birdies on the front nine moved Rai ahead again, only for a bogey at the eighth to hand the initiative back to Fleetwood.
A host of players began to bunch up behind the leaders, including McIlroy.The Northern Irishman eagled the par-five second but it was a run of five successive birdies at the turn that lifted him back into contention, with a birdie at the last moving him to 24 under and the clubhouse lead.
Meanwhile, birdies at the 16th and 17th drew Rai back level with Fleetwood, who saved par with another clutch putt at the second-last to ensure it stayed that way heading to the 18th.
Rai spurned his first chance on the 18th green, but made no mistake on the same hole in the play-off to secure his third DP World Tour Title.
The Abu Dhabi Championship is the first of two DP World Tour end-of-season play-off events, with the top 70 players competing this week and the leading 50 advancing to next week’s finale in Dubai.
Rai began the tournament 55th in the standings, but this victory means he will go into next week’s event ranked ninth.
McIlroy, who is two behind Colin Montgomerie’s record of eight years as the tour’s number one, leads the Race to Dubai standings by 767 points from Marco Penge, the Englishman who has won three times on tour this year.
Penge carded a final-round nine-under 63 to finish tied for ninth on 20 under alongside Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre and Angel Ayora of Spain.
Players who were once strangers are now extended members of hundreds of thousands of families.
Ordinarily, a team as old as the Dodgers would have to consider a roster makeover. Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas will be 37 by the start of the next World Series. Max Muncy will be 36, Kiké Hernández 35, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández 34 and Shohei Ohtani 32.
But under these circumstances, how could the Dodgers think of breaking up their team?
How could they unload any of their superstars, regardless of how much they could decline in the next year? How could they not retain their key free agents, regardless of how old they are?
They can’t, they can’t and they can’t.
The Dodgers have to run this back — again.
“Obviously, we would love everybody to come back,” Freeman said.
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Muncy has a $10-million team option for next season. The Dodgers have to pick it up.
Rojas and Kiké Hernández are free agents. The Dodgers have to re-sign them.
Freeman won’t be making the calls on his teammates, of course. The decisions will be made by president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who was characteristically evasive when asked about the efforts the Dodgers would make to keep their out-of-contract players.
“Obviously, guys who have been here and been a big part of it start with a major upper hand,” Friedman said. “That being said, they’re free agents. They’ve earned the right to go out and talk to the 29 other teams as well.”
Muncy doesn’t have a choice to leave if the Dodgers exercise his option, but Rojas and Kiké Hernández have said they would like to return next season.
Whatever Friedman decides shouldn’t preclude the Dodgers from shopping on the free-agent market, with Kyle Tucker and Steven Kwan being potential additions to their outfield.
But the nucleus of the Dodgers would be even older than it was this year when their collective age presented a variety of problems.
Their 18-inning victory in Game 3 clearly diminished them more than it did the Toronto Blue Jays, who won the next two games. In retrospect, that should have been expected, as the Dodgers struggled to maintain consistency on offense over a grinding six-month regular season.
While Betts transformed into one of the league’s best defensive shortstops, he experienced a sharp offensive decline. Muncy was limited to 100 games because of injuries. Teoscar Hernández wasn’t close to being the same player he was last year.
There were times that even Ohtani started to show the effects of being on the wrong side of 30. Ohtani’s father acknowledged this reality in a congratulatory open letter he wrote to his son, which was published in the Monday edition of Sports Nippon.
“Shohei, you’re 31 years old,” Toru Ohtani wrote in Japanese. “I think that as a baseball player, you’re in your prime, but there will come a time when you have to decide between pitching and hitting. When you can’t pitch anymore, you can be an outfielder. I think that if you practice, you can definitely do it.”
That being said, the team has to be kept together.
A championship can force teams into sentimental decisions, as was the case last winter when the Dodgers re-signed Teoscar Hernández to a three-year, $66-million contract.
This winter, they will have to settle similar disputes between their hearts and minds. They should listen to their hearts.
The celebration had hardly begun, when Shohei Ohtani first voiced the theme of the day.
“I’m already thinking about the third time,” he said in Japanese, standing atop a double-decker bus in downtown Los Angeles with of thousands of blue-clad, flag-waving, championship-celebrating Dodgers fans lining the streets around him for the team’s 2025 World Series parade.
Turns out, he wasn’t alone.
Two days removed from a dramatic Game 7 victory that made the Dodgers baseball’s first repeat champion in 25 years, the team rolled through the streets of downtown and into a sold-out rally at Dodger Stadium on Monday already thinking about what lies ahead in 2026.
With three titles in the last six seasons, their modern-day dynasty might now be cemented.
But their goal of adding to this “golden era of Dodger baseball,” as top executive Andrew Friedman has repeatedly called it, is far from over.
“All I have to say to you,” owner and chairman Mark Walter told the 52,703 fans at the team’s stadium rally, “is we’ll be back next year.”
“I have a crazy idea for you,” Friedman echoed. “How about we do it again?”
When manager Dave Roberts took the mic, he tripled down on that objective: “What’s better than two? Three! Three-peat! Three-peat! Let’s go.”
When shortstop Mookie Betts, the only active player with four World Series rings, followed him, he quadrupled the expectation: “I got four. Now it’s time to fill the hand all the way up, baby. ‘Three-peat’ ain’t never sounded so sweet. Somebody make that a T-shirt.”
For these history-achieving, legacy-sealing Dodgers, Monday was a reminder of the ultimate end goal — the kind of scene that, as they embark on another short winter, will soon fuel their motivations for another confetti-filled parade this time next year.
“For me, winning a championship, the seminal moment of that is the parade,” Friedman said. “The jubilation of doing it, when you get the final out, whatever game you win it in, is special. That night is special. But to be able to take a breath and then experience a parade, in my mind, that is what has always driven me to want to win.”
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“[To] do this for the city, that’s what it’s all about,” first baseman Freddie Freeman added. “There’s nothing that feels as important as winning a championship. And if so happens to be three in a row, that’s what it is. But that’s what’s gonna drive us to keep going.”
Much of the group had been part of the 2020 title team that was denied such a serenade following that pandemic-altered campaign. They had waited four long years to experience a city-wide celebration. The reception they received was sentimental and unique.
Now, as third baseman Max Muncy said with a devious grin from atop a makeshift stage in the Dodger Stadium outfield, “it’s starting to get a little bit comfortable up here. Let’s keep it going.”
“Losing,” star pitcher and World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto added, in English, in a callback to one of his memorable quotes from this past October, “isn’t an option.”
Doing it won’t be easy.
This year, the Dodgers’ win total went down to 93 in an inconsistent regular season. They had to play in the wild-card round for the first time since the playoffs expanded in 2022. And in the World Series, they faced elimination in Games 6 and 7, narrowly winning both to complete their quest to repeat.
“I borderline still can’t believe we won Game 7,” fan favorite Kiké Hernández said in a bus-top interview.
But, he quickly added, “We’re all winners. Winners win.”
Thus, they also get celebrations like Monday’s.
As it was 367 days earlier, the Dodgers winded down a parade route in front of tens of thousands of fans from Temple Street to Grand Avenue to 7th Street to Figueroa. Both on board the double-decker buses and in the frenzied masses below, elation swirled and beverages flowed.
Once the team arrived at Dodger Stadium, it climbed atop a blue circular riser in the middle of the field — the final symbolic steps of their ascent back to the mountaintop of the sport.
Anthony Anderson introduced them to the crowd, while Ice Cube delivered the trophy in a blue 1957 Chevy Bel-Air.
Familiar scenes, they are hoping become an annual tradition.
“Job in 2024, done. Job in 2025, done,” Freeman said. “Job in 2026? Starts now.”
The Dodgers did take time to recognize their newfound place in baseball history, having become just the sixth MLB franchise to win three titles in the span of six years and the first since the New York Yankees of 1998 to 2000 to win in consecutive years.
Where last year’s parade day felt more like an overdue coronation, this one served to crystallize their legacy.
“Everybody’s been asking questions about a dynasty,” Hernández said. “How about three in six years? How about a back-to-back?”
And, on Monday, all the main characters of this storybook accomplishment got their moment in the sun.
There was, as team broadcaster and rally emcee Joe Davis described him, “the Hall of Fame-bound” Roberts, who now only trails Walter Alston in team history with three World Series rings.
“We talked about last year, wanting to run it back,” he said. “And I’ll tell you right now, this group of guys was never gonna be denied to bring this city another championship.”
There was Game 7 hero Miguel Rojas calling up surprise October closer Roki Sasaki, on his birthday, to dance to his “Bailalo Rocky” entrance song; a request Sasaki sheepishly obliged by pumping his fist to the beat.
Yamamoto, coming off his heroic pitching victories in Games 6 and 7, received some of the day’s loudest ovations.
“We did it together,” he said. “I love the Dodgers. I love Los Angeles.”
Muncy, Ohtani and Blake Snell also all addressed the crowd.
“I’m trying to get used to this,” Snell said.
“I’m ready to get another ring next year,” Ohtani reiterated.
One franchise face who won’t be back for that chase: Clayton Kershaw, who rode into the sunset of retirement by getting one last day at Dodger Stadium, fighting back tears as he thanked the crowd at the end of his illustrious (and also Hall of Fame-bound) 18-year career.
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“Last year, I said I was a Dodger for life. And today, that’s true,” Kershaw said. “And today, I get to say that I’m a champion for life. And that’s never going away.”
Kershaw, of course, is one of the few still around from the club’s dark days of the early 2010s, when money was scarce and playoff appearances were uncertain and parades were only things to dream about — not expect.
As he walks away, however, the team has been totally transformed.
Now, the Dodgers have been to 13 straight postseasons. They’ve set payroll records and bolstered their roster with a wave of star signings. They’ve turned the pursuit of championships into a yearly expectation, proud but unsatisfied with what they’ve achieved to this point.
“I think, definitionally, it’s a dynasty,” said Friedman, the architect of this run with the help of Walter’s deep-pocketed Guggenheim ownership group. “But that to me, in a lot of ways, that kind of caps it if you say, ‘OK, this is what it is.’ For me, it’s still evolving and growing. We want to add to it. We want to continue it, and do everything we can to put it at a level where people after us have a hard time reaching.”
On Monday, they raised that bar another notch higher.
“This parade was the most insane thing I’ve ever witnessed, been a part of,” Kershaw said. “It truly is the most incredible day ever to be able to end your career on.”
On Tuesday, the Dodgers’ long road toward holding another one begins.
“I know they’re gonna get one more next year,” Kershaw told the crowd. “And I’m gonna watch, just like all of you.”
The former Seat and Ford driver is part of a Toyota team that have already won the Manufacturers’ World Championship for the fifth year in a row.
And as so often happens in motorsport, Evans’ team-mates are also his closest rivals.
Rovanpera is the youngest ever world champion after winning back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023.
Now 25 and in his final season before leaving WRC for new challenges, the Finnish driver has already won three rallies this year and will be ready to pounce on any mistakes from his team-mate.
Ogier, 41, is looking to tie Sebastien Loeb’s record of nine WRC titles. The Frenchman has won five rallies this season and led the championship before a crash at last month’s Central European Rally handed the advantage back to the Welshman.
Despite the competition, Evans says relationships are good.
“We all get on fairly well in the team,” he explained.
“Rallying is quite unique in that we’re racing against the clock rather than physically against each other on track.
“That normally means we get on a bit better in the background and the team has a very good atmosphere on the whole.
“Everything is shared among the drivers, so everything is very open and we tend to try and race it out on the stages, so normally we get on pretty well.”
Evans has been competing against the best of the best for years. If he is able to join his team-mates as a world champion the achievement will be monumental.
Fourteen years after his first WRC race he is as close as he has ever been to glory.
Evans will be hoping a journey that started in Dolgellau could have the greatest of endings in Jeddah via Japan.
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Kyle Larson denied Denny Hamlin his first career championship when a late caution at Phoenix Raceway sent the title-deciding finale into overtime.
Hamlin was three laps from shedding the label as the greatest NASCAR driver to never win a championship when fellow title contender William Byron got a flat tire and hit the wall to bring out the caution.
Hamlin led the field down pit road and got four new tires on his Toyota; Larson only took two tires on his Chevrolet. It meant Larson was fifth for the two-lap sprint to the finish, with Hamlin back in 10th.
With so little time to run down Larson, Hamlin came up short with a sixth-place finish as Larson finished third. Ryan Blaney, who was eliminated from title contention last week, won the race.
It is the second championship for Larson, who won his first title in 2021 when he joined Hendrick Motorsports.
As Larson celebrated, Hamlin sat in his car motionless for several seconds, then wiped his face with a white towel, never showing any emotion.
“I’m just numb,” Hamlin said after consoling his crying daughters on pit road. “We were 40 seconds away from a championship. This sport can drive you absolutely crazy because sometimes speed, talent, none of that matters.”
Larson, who has been in a slump since his disastrous Memorial Day attempt to race both the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, was also in shock.
“I really can’t believe it. We didn’t lead a lap and won the championship,” Larson said. “We had an average car at best and had the right front [tire] go down, lost a lap and got the wave around, saved by the caution with the wave around. It’s just unbelievable. What a year by this motorsports team.”
When Hamlin finally got out of his car he embraced his crew members but it was a scene of disbelief among the Joe Gibbs Racing crowd. Team members were crying, some sitting in shock on the pavement, Gibbs himself stood silent, one hand on his hip and a look of disbelief on his face.
It is the sixth shot at a title to slip away from Hamlin in his 20 years driving for Gibbs. He led 208 of the 319 laps and started from the pole.
“Nothing I could do different. I mean, prepared as good as I could coming into the weekend and my team gave me a fantastic car,” Hamlin said. “Just didn’t work out. I was just praying ‘no caution’ and we had one there. What can you do? It’s just not meant to be.”
He said crew chief Chris Gayle made the correct call with four tires, but too many others only took two, which created too big of a gap for Hamlin to close on Larson in so little time.
“Just numb. Feel like there’s still some racing left. I can’t believe it’s over but there’s nothing I can do but just suck it up,” Hamlin said. “I just needed 40 more seconds of green flag.”
Larson was OK during the race, but hasn’t won since early May, a slump that has now extended to 24 consecutive races.
Hamlin teammate Chase Briscoe finished 18th in his debut in the championship finale, while Larson teammate Byron was 33rd after his late issue. He felt awful for ruining Hamlin’s chance even though his Hendrick Motorsports teammate won the championship.
“I’m just super bummed that it was a caution obviously. I hate that. Hate it for Denny. I hate it for the 11 team,” Byron said. “I mean, Denny was on his way to it. I hate that. There’s a lot of respect there. I obviously do not want to cause a caution. If I had known what tire it was, known that a tire was going down before I got to the corner, I would have done something different.”
Taylor looked poised for a 4-1 lead but, having potted a red to leave O’Sullivan needing a snooker, he went in-off when potting the black with his next shot.
World number five O’Sullivan made a clearance of 48 to cut the deficit to 3-2.
Taylor won a nervy sixth frame in which both players missed chances, but it was vintage O’Sullivan from that point on as he punished any errors and demonstrated his exceptional cue ball control.
A superb long red got him going in the deciding frame and, with the balls in ideal position, he sealed victory with ease.
O’Sullivan, who turns 50 next month, is selective about the tournaments he competes in.
He has reached the quarter-finals of the Shanghai Masters and Xi’an Grand Prix and the final of the Saudi Arabia Masters this season.
O’Sullivan told the WST website: “It never feels like a grind when you are cueing well.
“I’m enjoying playing more than I have done for maybe over a decade.
“When I play alright, the crowd appreciate the shots and the break-building. When I click into gear, that raises the temperature in there a little bit.”
On Monday, in celebration of the Dodgers becoming baseball’s first back-to-back champion in 25 years, Los Angeles will throw another party for the Dodgers.
The Dodgers’ 2025 championship parade starts Monday at 11 a.m. and runs through downtown, followed by a rally at Dodger Stadium. The rally requires a ticket, which can be obtained starting at noon Sunday at dodgers.com/postseason.
For fans with rally tickets, parking lot gates will open at 8:30 a.m. and stadium gates at 9 a.m. The event is expected to start at about 12:15 p.m.
The parade and rally will be aired live on Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 11 as well as SportsNet LA and AM 570, the team said.
In last year’s rally, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and Ice Cube performed next to one another, with Roberts dancing and Ice Cube singing.
At one point, future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw took his turn at the microphone and hollered, “Dodger for life!”
In September, Kershaw announced he would retire at the end of the season. In his only World Series appearance, he got a critical out in the Dodgers’ 18-inning victory in Game 3.
He’ll make his final Dodger Stadium appearance as a player as part of a second consecutive championship rally. He’ll be back: The Dodgers will retire his No. 22 — they retire the number of all their Hall of Famers — and he’d certainly be in line to throw ceremonial first pitches in the Dodgers’ future postseason runs.
For now, though: Three-time champion Dodger for life.
