Poor Gary Stal won’t be remembered for win in Abu Dhabi

Who won last week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship?

The answer is young Frenchman Gary Stal, who claimed his maiden European Tour title with a thrilling final-round 65.

Sadly for Gary, it won’t be remembered as the one he won, but the tournament where Martin Kaymer lost a 10-shot lead.

He’ll now have to take his place alongside Jean van de Velde, Greg Norman and Arnold Palmer in the list of golfing collapses.

If the roles had been reversed, it would have been more understandable. But Martin has proved himself one of the strongest players in golf.

Kaymer won last year’s US Open wire-to wire, and he famously holed the putt to complete Europe’s Ryder Cup comeback at Medinah in 2012.

The German began last Sunday with a six-stroke advantage and started with three birdies in four holes.

Suddenly, he was 10 clear, and I wonder if he just switched off for a second and thought he had it won.

And as every golfer at any level knows, the minute you think you’ve cracked it, trouble is lurking around the corner.

It was the perfect storm. Kaymer hit two bad drives that ended up in the desert scrub, forcing him to take drops costing him five shots.

At the same time, Stal had a birdie barrage.

Before he knew it, the lead had evaporated. And because it was the first event of the season, Kaymer wasn’t mentally sharp enough to recover.

He was in a state of shock after the round, and that will have quickly turned to anger.

He probably wishes he could have played in Qatar this week, and exorcised a few of those demons straight away.

This will have been a long week on the practice ground, so he’ll be itching to tee off in Dubai on Thursday.

Golf is all about coping with disappointments.

I was lucky to win a good number of tournaments, but there were plenty when I lost a lead on the final day, too.

All the greats have lost events they think they should have won, if not from such a spectacular position as Kaymer.

But the difference between the best and the rest is they recover from these setbacks, learn from what they did wrong and come back even stronger.

Kaymer has already won golf’s biggest events, so his quality is not in question.

But we’ll watch carefully in Dubai to see if what happened in Abu Dhabi has left any serious mental scars.