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For a fleeting 20 minutes or so, it looked as if Rory McIlroy was going to conjure up a final-round comeback for the ages at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship on Sunday.
He could feel it. The crowd could feel it. Any of his peers who bothered looking at a leaderboard would have felt it too. What a rich irony it would have been, given the many ways over the years that McIlroy has contrived to snatch a near miss from the jaws of victory at this event that he has never won.
Alas, the moments passed and by the end the Northern Irishman was left with the rather more familiar feeling of disappointment that invariably accompanies his walk from the 18th green at this season opener.
Rory McIlroy fell to a disappointing defeat at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week
Belgium's Thomas Pieters claimed his sixth World Tour title with Abu Dhabi Championship win
Six under par for 13 holes and in a highly improbable tie for second place, having only made the cut on the limit on Friday evening, McIlroy believed that if he could play the tortuous final five holes into a stiff breeze in two under, he would post a number that no one would catch.
As it turned out, no one would have topped it either, the only trouble being that McIlroy became another victim of that brutal sequence, dropping
