RORY McILROY faces the greatest challenge of his life at this week's $7.5m Dubai World Championship as he bids to become the youngest player since Seve Ballesteros to capture the Harry Vardon Trophy.

Indeed, the pressure on McIlroy (20) to win the inaugural Race to Dubai is infinitely more intense than that faced by 19-year-old Seve in 1976, when he romped away from Eamonn Darcy and Sam Torrance to win the first of his six European Order of Merit titles.

McIlroy's second-place finish in Hong Kong on Sunday puts him €128,172 ahead of his closest rival and International Sports Management stablemate, Lee Westwood, going into this week's showdown on the spectacular new Earth Course in Dubai.

That looks like a king's ransom to many of us poor schmucks struggling just to keep a roof over our head but McIlroy's lead could vanish quicker this weekend than the Nama billions in an event which offers €830,675 to the winner, €553,781 for second, 'just' €199,362 to the man in fifth place or a paltry €114,633 for 10th.

Yet only the top four in the current money list (McIlroy, Westwood, Martin Kaymer and Ross Fisher) have a mathematical chance of winning the inaugural Race to Dubai following the withdrawal of Paul Casey through injury from this week's finale.

As he peruses the world from a career-high 13th in the world rankings and within reach of the top-10 target he'd set himself after winning the Dubai Desert Classic last February, nobody is better equipped than McIlroy to handle the potentially blinding spotlight which will focus on him this week.

affable

His remarkable gift for golf is only part of the story. This young man from Holywood is incredibly self-assured. Under that curly mop of black hair and an affable boyish exterior, McIlroy knows where his destiny lies and how to get there.

In recent days, McIlroy gave the world a glimpse of his steely resolve with the decision to take out his US PGA Tour card in 2010. Less than a month ago, as speculation raged about his young client's future, SportsBusiness Journal in the US received an email from McIlroy's agent, Chubby Chandler, the larger-than-life founder of ISM, which bluntly stated: "Rory has decided not to join the PGA Tour in 2010." There was no elaboration -- the master, it seemed, had spoken.

However, when the matter was raised with McIlroy at the recent Volvo World Match Play, his reply was equally blunt: "I saw that. That's not accurate."

Precisely how inaccurate was revealed last week when McIlroy, despite the obvious wishes of his manager, announced that he would take that leap of faith into American golf next season. Plainly, this young man prefers to pull the strings, not dance lamely on the end of them.

After watching him flourish under the spotlight as he made his debut in the United States last spring and then perform impressively on his first visit to the US Masters, US Open and US PGA, it's clear that McIlroy relishes the challenge and appreciates the advantages of being a member of both the PGA and European Tours.

Don't mind the naysayers -- and there have been one or two in British media circles -- the pitfalls are few and far between for a player of McIlroy's ability. For a start, he'll have little difficulty fulfilling the requirement to play 15 tournaments on the US roster. Including the Majors and World Golf Championships, McIlroy competed in 11 in 2009, while 13 already figure on the schedule he's announced for the eight months from January to next August's US PGA.

Indeed, McIlroy will play one less tournament in that time than he did in the same period this year and, given his plan to establish a base in the US, he'll also make fewer trips back and forth across the Atlantic. Qualification for the FedEx Cup play-offs would propel McIlroy through the 15-tournament threshold and, once October's Ryder Cup is over, the Ulster prodigy will be free to devote his full attention to the 2010 Race to Dubai climax.

Even Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie believes McIlroy will have no problem making it onto the European team at Celtic Manor. "It's a good move. I think Rory's game suits America and he'll do very well," said the Scot, adding: "If I take my captain's hat off, I can't see him not being a Ryder Cup player."

With 16 US and European events on his 'dance card' through next year's PGA Championship, McIlroy need not exceed his 2009 total of 29 tournaments worldwide, despite his added commitment to the US.

This week's Dubai World Championship is his 27th event of the current season, following which McIlroy represents Ireland (with Graeme McDowell) at the World Cup in China before wrapping up his year at the Nedbank Challenge. After a six-week winter break, he'll resume playing in Abu Dhabi in January, defend his title in Dubai before beginning a long stint in the United States at the Accenture Match Play.

For the record, the busiest players in the world's top 20 this year have been Retief Goosen, who plays his 32nd tournament in Dubai this week. Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington are next, both men playing 30 tournaments this year, including the South African's outing at the Presidents Cup and the Dubliner's victory at the Irish PGA.

However, nobody makes more intercontinental journeys than Harrington, who thinks nothing of making a quick flit back and forth across the Atlantic to be with his family if he has a week between tournaments on the PGA Tour. That is the lot of the dual-Tour player once his children start school ... a situation McIlroy is unlikely to face for a while.

One commentator last weekend suggested Harrington's slump in the first half of 2009 was due to the pressure of playing on both tours, citing as a key factor the distance separating the Irishman from his elderly Scottish coach Bob Torrance when the Irishman's swing started to creak.

Considering that Harrington has held his full US Tour card since 2005, winning three Major titles in the interim, it was a preposterous suggestion. Yes, the Irishman went 13 weeks without seeing Torrance earlier this year but it was at his own discretion.

There'll be little to prevent McIlroy from flying his coach, Michael Bannon, out for the occasional week with him on the US Tour, as he did in the run-up to his US Masters debut at Augusta.

Okay, assuming McIlroy wins the Race to Dubai, he'll have little opportunity to cash in on his status as European Order of Merit-winner in the US, where tournaments are expected to pay more than mere lip service to the ban on appearance fees!

And he'll also have less time for money-spinning, mid-season junkets to the Far East -- like last September's trip to the Kolon-Hana Bank Korea Open.

That event took place on the same week as the BMW at Cog Hill and it seemed incongruous for a player of McIlroy's talent to be playing a kiss-my-ass event on the far side of the planet when Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Harrington and the world's other top performers were in the thick of the FedEx Cup action in America. That's the nub of the matter.

As he proved with last week's decision, McIlroy is no longer the wide-eyed Tour rookie of 25 months ago. In that remarkably short space of time, he has grown into a young man with more than enough strength of character to prevail in the Dubai melting pot this week . . . and take America by storm in 2010.

- Karl MacGinty

Irish Independent