Peter Hanson's Road to Dubai may now go via Hong Kong Open

In-form Peter Hanson's surprise surge into contention in the European Tour's Race To Dubai could see him make a last-minute decision to add the UBS Hong Kong Open to his schedule in a bid to pip the world number one, Rory McIlroy.

Swede Hanson made a huge jump up the table to second place after winning the US$7 million BMW Masters in Shanghai last week, and after an impressive start at the WGC-HSBC Champions yesterday, he said he was ready to make some late changes to his plans if his form holds until Sunday.

Hanson, 35, shot a six-under 66 at the Olazabal course at Mission Hills, with seven birdies and one bogey, for a share of second place behind Louis Oosthuizen and Adam Scott.

McIlroy has controversially skipped this tournament, and Hanson's Shanghai win has propelled him to just over €800,000 (HK$10 million) behind the Northern Irishman with a handful of events remaining. A win in Dongguan would see the Swede go top, but then McIlroy would have the US$6 million Barclays Singapore Open and the US$2 million Hong Kong Open to regain the lead. Hanson is currently planning to play in neither.

"I would definitely consider [Singapore and Hong Kong]. It's a tough decision today because I have other obligations in America, so I'll have to speak to my agent and other people and see if we can work around it," Hanson said.

"I spoke to [European Tour chief] George O'Grady and he's trying to hold spots for me. I told him I was going to wait until the end of this week to decide. Hopefully, I can be up there Sunday and we'll see how big a gap it is."

Hanson, who made a superb late surge to make the 2010 Ryder Cup team, knows McIlroy will be hard to beat.