Marc Warren and Scott Jamieson face fight in last event to hang on to DP World Tour cards

Two of Scotland’s most experienced DP World Tour campaigners are battling to hang on to their coveted cards heading into this week’s Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, the final regular event of the season.

Pictured during a practice round for the 2021 Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club, Marc Warren, Stephen Gallacher and Scott Jamieson are all below the DP World Tour card cut-off line heading into the final regular event of the season but Gallacher's seat at the top table is already secured for next season. Picture: Andrew Redington/Getty Images.

Four-time tour winner Marc Warren and his close friend, Scott Jamieson, are both sitting on the wrong side of the card cut-off line ahead of the $3.75 million event, which starts on Thursday at Doha Golf Club. The top 116 players in the Race to Dubai on Sunday night will retain full playing privileges for next season and, following stuttering campaigns, Warren and Jamieson currently sit 117th and 119th respectively.

Warren, a World Cup winner alongside Colin Montgomerie 16 years ago, is just over five points behind the 116th-placed player, Dane John Axelsen, and will be hoping to maintain the form that earned him a top-25 finish in the Dunhill Links before also picking up valuable points in last week’s Andalucia Masters.

The 42-year-old first held a card on the main tour in 2006, when, on the back of a Scandinavian Masters success, he finished 42nd on the money-list, as he did the following year, helped by a triumph on home soil in the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles. Warren then made the top 35 three years in a row from 2013, including a career-best 25th in 2015, before a dip in form saw him lose his full card at the end of the 2018 campaign.

After winning the Austrian Open, the first event to be held after a Covid shutdown, in 2020, the East Kilbride man regained his seat at the top table

but narrowly survived in 2021 and just made the top 100 last season.

Florida-based Jamieson, who turns 40 next month, has held his card for 13 consecutive seasons, finishing a career-best 26th in 2017, but the current campaign has turned into a slog for the 2012 Nelson Mandela Championship winner.

He opened the season with two top-15 finishes and made the cut in his first four outings, including back-to-back Rolex Series events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, before then picking up a decent cheque for finishing third in the Korea Championship presented by Genesis.

However, the Glaswegian has missed the cut in eight of his last 13 events, with his latest early exit in the Andalucia Masters dropping him five spots in the Race to Dubai and below the cut-off line for the first time during the season. It means that making the cut in the first instance in Qatar is imperative for him - Warren, too - to have any chance of avoiding a trip to the Qualifying School final in Spain in the middle of next month.

Stephen Gallacher, who sits 262nd in the Race to Dubai, is in a different position to Warren and Jamieson as far as his playing privileges are concerned. The four-time tour winner started the current season without a card, but it was then discovered that he’d been mistakenly excluded from the career money list category.

Gallacher’s category for the remainder 2023 campaign was then changed with immediate effect in May and, by way of atoning for the disadvantage caused to the 48-year-old in the first six months of this season, he has also been given a special membership extension in 2024.