It was very much a case of mixed emotions for the Højgaard twins at last year’s DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, with Nicolai birdieing five in a row from 13-through-17 to storm to the top of the leaderboard and claim his third DP World Tour victory, while Rasmus, the younger of the two by a couple of minutes, found the hazard with his approach to the last and watched through his fingers as Matthieu Pavon, playing in the group behind, got up-and-down from 66 yards to overtake him and secure the 10th and final PGA Tour card for 2024.
Fast-forward three months and the Frenchman was winning on the PGA Tour – a victory that would propel him to the top of the FedEx Cup rankings temporarily and would secure his place in the 2024 PGA Tour Signature Events and set him on course for his eventual top-50 finish.
This year, thanks in no small measure to his incredible victory at Royal County Down, the tables have turned and Rasmus Højgaard has a more than 1,000 point advantage over Romain Langasque who is the bubble man for PGA Tour graduation, and he’s guaranteed to join his brother on the game’s premier tour in 2025.
“Yeah, sitting there last year on that Sunday was a bit rough,” Rasmus said prior to the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the penultimate event of the DP World Tour season. “I was obviously very, very happy to see Nicolai win the tournament, but for myself, it was tough that I missed out one spot on a card for the PGA Tour. I was very motivated to come out this year and play some good golf. I’ve managed that in stretches during the year.
“So yeah, it’s been a great year. I’m happy where I’m at and try to squeeze the last bit out of these two events.”
It hasn’t exactly been plain sailing for the elder Højgaard who sits in 100th place in the FedEx Cup rankings and owes his card retention largely to a runner-up finish – ironically to Pavon at Torrey Pines – and to a T16 finish at The Masters, but the first season is usually the hardest with new courses, new cities, new faces and a step up in standard to navigate. The experience he gained won’t quite symbiotically transfer to his brother, but he’s the perfect sounding board and will share the knowledge gained.
“Yeah, it’s probably a good thing that Nicolai went over there to start with,” Højgaard said.
“Now I can sort of guide myself around and hopefully not make some of the same mistakes hopefully. We talked a lot about it, and yeah, we’re going to probably find maybe a place over there and make it easier, not traveling over the Atlantic every other week.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of things on the plate right now that we are trying to figure out but we’re going to take a couple of weeks and probably in the off-season look at that. For now, we are both very focused on playing.”
The recent revolution in Danish golf has been remarkable, and with Niklas Norgaard and Thorbjørn Olesen also contending for the 10 PGA Tour berths, the Danes could be a force to be reckoned with on the PGA Tour, just as they’ve become on the European circuits.
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