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At the beginning of the week, the news out of Abu Dhabi was being dominated by Padraig Harrington’s DQ. No matter. Martin Kaymer, who seems to revel in being an afterthought, went out and shot rounds of 67-65-66 to hold a five-shot lead over the young Ulsterman Rory McIlroy.

While the final group is not short on star power, it seems unlikely that McIlroy will be able to overcome the Germanator (?) with him playing so well and having his closest competitor right underneath his nose.

Kaymer pulling out the victory cannot be assumed as a foregone conclusion because as we know, anything can happen over 18 holes.

It’s hard to imagine Kaymer blowing the lead, simply because of the sheer bulk of it, but aslo because of his previous success at the Abu Dhabi. In four tries, Kaymer has won twice. In honor of Conan O’Brien’s motion to use words in the dictionary, let’s go ahead and assume Kaymer will hold on and win the tournament THRICE.

With the win Martin Kaymer will do something Phil Mickelson had a dozen chances to do last year, but could never accomplish: surpass Tiger Woods in the Official World Golf Rankings.

If Kaymer were to win, he would supplant Woods as the No. 2 player in the world. It’s an impressive feat, but moving up the world rankings is not the main goal of 2011 for the German.

“Every tournament I play this year, at least in the beginning, it will be like this,” Kaymer told the Telegraph after Friday’s round. “If you finish here or there you get to No. 2. And of course if you get to No. 2 you want to get No. 1. But it is not my main goal this year.”

Wasn’t his main goal the same as mine? To card a hole-in-one?

Then there was the little thing about winning the British and becoming the best player in Europe (which in essence would make him the best in the world).

Either way, it appears the Tiger will fall to No. 3 in the world, behind Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer, which brings up another nice little historical tidbit, courtesy of Steve Elling’s twitter:

Yikes, Eldrick. Step yo’ game up.