LEE WESTWOOD paused in his hour of victory to offer some pointed words of advice to his vanquished young rival Rory McIlroy.

Westwood didn't sugar the pill, however, and as McIlroy grappled with the greatest disappointment of his young professional life, one suspects he'd have found the winner's frank comments unpalatable.

Yet, as he digests the events of four fascinating days in the desert, this highly intelligent 20-year-old must accept he lost hands down to Westwood from day one in the battle for supremacy at the Dubai World Championship.

The Englishman's runaway six-stroke victory over Ross McGowan in the tournament and first place in the inaugural Race to Dubai are worth a combined €1.827m, while his €4.237m official prize money for the season is the greatest sum ever amassed by one player in the European Order of Merit.

Yet almost as precious in the tight, two-way battle between Westwood and his young stablemate at International Sports Management are the bragging rights -- and the 36-year-old didn't spare McIlroy's feelings with his blunt admission that mind games can be as significant as golf shots in winning tournaments.

demeanour

Particularly the assertion that he'd pulled a con job with his "secret plan" in Dubai and set out to "bully" the opposition -- McIlroy included -- with his demeanour on and off the course.

No question, Westwood won the inaugural Dubai World Championship and clinched The Race to Dubai by playing the most sublime golf of his career -- especially yesterday, when he never missed a fairway, hit all 18 greens in regulation and dropped every putt of consequence on his way to a flawless course-record 64.

Yet if McIlroy had impressed Westwood by shooting a gritty 68 despite not playing especially well in the first round, he handed the initiative to the Englishman by admitting he was glad they did not have to play with each other the following day.

Asked if he did feel he'd bullied the rest into submission in Dubai, Westwood said: "It felt like it, yeah. It felt like it today. Obviously, it was a massive feather in my cap on the first day when Rory said he was glad to get away from it.

"There's nothing worse to say than that if you're Rory and he'll learn from it. There's nothing better for me than to hear a competitor say they're glad they're not playing with me."

After saying on Saturday there'd been a secret plan behind his exceptionally confident approach over the first 54 holes of the tournament, Westwood confessed: "Okay, if you really want to know, the secret was making everyone else think I had a secret, when I didn't really have one.

"The reason for the big turnaround in (my) confidence and stuff like that was catching (caddie) Billy (Foster) at the beach party on Tuesday evening when he probably had enough Heineken to tell me what he really thought.

"He said I'd not been myself recently. I'd paid too much attention to other people around me. He told me I'd been out here 16 years, which is longer than all three of them (McIlroy, Ross Fisher and Martin Kaymer) put together and have won 30 tournaments, which is more than they've all won.

"He said, 'You've got to bully them on the golf course. You've got to be yourself again and get back to the instinct you had in the late 90s and 2000'."

Westwood believes McIlroy can one day succeed Tiger Woods as world number one. "Listen, Rory's as good (a young player) as I've seen out here and he's had a fantastic year. He's shown a lot of consistency," he said.

Yet the cumulative €1.07m McIlroy earned for third place in the tournament (courtesy of a closing 67) and finishing second in the Race to Dubai (€627,741 behind Westwood) plainly was of no consolation.

"I was trying to become the youngest player since Seve to win the title. It was a precious opportunity," said McIlroy, admitting this was the greatest disappointment of his career.

As Westwood hadn't dropped a shot since the eighth on Friday, McIlroy was going to have to produce something special yesterday to knock him out of the comfort zone. Yet his failure to pick up a birdie on his first eight holes was key, especially when the Englishman landed five in his first seven.

The frustrated youngster even smashed his three-wood so deep into an advertising hoarding on the side of the par-five seventh it took a couple of seconds to extricate it. "Better than taking it out on JP (Fitzgerald, his caddie) I suppose," he later joked.

Yet McIlroy was discreetly informed by Tournament Director David Garland that the incident had been noted and would be reviewed by officials. A fine seems likely.

ambition

McIlroy eventually sank an 18-foot putt for birdie at nine, then picked up four more on the way home. However, it wasn't all bad as, despite initial projections, he managed to achieve his season-long ambition to make the world top-10, rising three places from 13th.

Mercifully, he has little time to dwell on his misfortune as he heads for China today with fellow Ulsterman Graeme McDowell to represent Ireland in the Mission Hills World Cup.

Padraig Harrington's mind was already darting forward to the technical work he plans to do this winter as he posted a final-round 68 for a share of fourth place (€224,282) with Geoff Ogilvy and a €187,500 bonus for finishing 15th in 'the Race'.

The Dubliner, who plays just once more this year in Tiger's Chevron World Challenge next month, failed to win on Tour this season for the first time in 10 years but insists he will leave 2009 as "a much better player".

- Karl MacGinty in Dubai

Irish Independent