Lee edges closer to landmark in Turkey

Worksop golfer Westwood is currently tenth in the standings but is pleased with his form which has seen three top five finishes this season.

And, in the run up to the event at the Regnum Carya Golf & Spa Resort, Westwood also revealed he was nearing an extraordinary landmark.

He said: “This is a big end to the season. This is a big tournament, Dubai is obviously a very big tournament and then myself and Danny are representing England in the World Cup down in Australia, the last tournament of the year for me so looking forward to that.

“And then start again next year, my 24th season on Tour. We were working out how many miles I’ve walked. Two more years before I’ve walked around the world, so looking forward to the future.”

Westwood teed off at 11.40am on Thursday alongside Bernd Wiesberger and Tyrrell Hatton.

“I’m hitting the ball very nicely, consistently,” added the former World Number One. “It’s nice to see the putts starting to go in more regularly as well, so the whole game is coming into shape.”

Meanwhile countryman Willett, who won the Masters earlier this year, is ranked second going in to the four-day tournament, behind Race to Dubai leader Rory McIlroy.

“We’ve been leading it for a long, long time,” said Willett. “Unfortunately last week, I had probably my worst event on Tour for the years I’ve been on and Henrik finished second, so jumped us.

“For me, this is a pretty big week. Henrik (Stenson) is not here. He was never scheduled to play anyway. So it gives me a chance to either close that gap, or hopefully leapfrog again and make it really interesting coming down to the last two.

“We were never going to win the Race to Dubai on the amount we were on. We always had to bump it forward and that’s still the aim. Got to go out here this week and hopefully the golf game gets a little better and we just keep working forward.

“We’ve got Nedbank next week and then the Race to Dubai finale in three weeks’ time. So there’s still a lot of golf left. I’ve just not been playing very well, so that’s the main aim of the next three weeks.”