The DP World Tour Championship Dubai is set to begin on Thursday hosted by the Jumeirah Golf Estates. It is the final event of the Race to Dubai Final Series and signals the end of the 2014 European Tour schedule.

Rory McIlroy has already sewn up the $1.5 million bonus that goes to the top points earner in the season-long Race To Dubai. Based on the strength of his four wins and eight top-10 finishes in European Tour events, he had built an insurmountable lead.

McIlroy was forced to miss the first three Final Series tournaments, the BMW Masters, WGC-HSBC Championship and the Turkish Airlines Open, due to a required court appearance in his lawsuit against his former management company, Horizon.

Jamie Donaldson and Sergio Garcia were the only European Tour members that had an outside chance of catching McIlroy. When Brooks Koepka won and both Donaldson (19) and Garcia (25) finished well down the leaderboard in Turkey, McIlroy was assured of the bonus, for the second time in three years.

Henrik Stenson won the Race to Dubai last season, as well as, the FedEx Cup on the PGA Tour. He is ranked No. 2, behind McIlroy, after his third place finish last week in the Turkish Airlines Open at the Montgomerie Maxx Royal Golf Club in Antalya, Turkey.

The 60 players in the field are playing for a piece of the remaining $3.5 million in bonus pool money, plus a slice of the $8 million purse for the DP World Tour Championship, to be divided among the field at the end of the week.

A quality field has assembled in Dubai for the European Tour finale and only the amount of Christmas bonus money each player will receive is left to be determined.