European Tour: The trophy presented to the winner of the Abu Dhabi Championship is one of the finest on tour. It's the shape of a falcon, a bird of prey noted for its elegance and grace. Yesterday, on the kind of beautiful day that makes this oil-rich emirate a paradise of sorts, Martin Kaymer, a 23-year-old German with a focused disposition and an elegant game to boot, ensured his would be only the third name engraved on it, following those of Chris DiMarco and Paul Casey.

It was the first wire-to-wire win on the European Tour this season.

Kaymer is a player for the future, and this maiden tour win, in his 33rd appearance, catapulted him into the world's top 35. That earns him invitations into not only next month's Accenture Matchplay but also, even more appetisingly, the US Masters in April.

Like the falcon, Kaymer has moved swiftly, from third-tier development tours to the game's elite in just two years.

In a way, it was understandable if the pressure of attempting to close in on victory meant Kaymer actually played his least impressive golf of the four days. Having started with a six-stroke cushion, he closed with 74 for 273, 15 under par, which left him four clear in the end from Lee Westwood and Henrik Stenson. It also gave him the biggest cheque of his career, for €225,421.

Paul McGinley, despite a putter that failed to ignite, finished with a birdie on the 18th for a 71 to lie on 280, eight under, and claim his first top-10 finish in almost 15 months.

Indeed, it was a decent showing from the Irish contingent, with Rory McIlroy and Pádraig Harrington finishing in tied-11th and Peter Lawrie in tied-17th.

"If I'm going to contend in tournaments, then I can't walk away contented," said McGinley. "Certainly, it is a step in the right direction. But I believe my golf was actually better than my finishing position.

"It is good to play well in the first week back on tour, but it is a long season and there is a long way to go. I'm going in the right direction, but I won't be taking my foot off the gas. I'm not 100 per cent delighted because I left a lot of shots out there. The way I played (tee to green), I was good enough to win," said McGinley.

Yet, the honour of winning belonged to Kaymer. For three days, it had seemed he was playing a different course from everyone else as he raced into the lead and established a six-stroke gap at midway.

As he left the Emirates Palace hotel yesterday morning and took the 25-minute road trip to the club, Kaymer knew this was his best chance to secure a maiden win; last year he had let the chance slip twice, in the Welsh Open and the Scandinavian Masters.

Others, though, had different ideas. Westwood, for one, rolled in putts on the practice green with such ease that his thoughts returned to the European Open at the K Club in 1999, when he made a final-round charge, having started the day seven shots behind Darren Clarke, to win. And when yesterday Westwood started birdie-birdie, a similar charge looked on.

And Kaymer was contriving to make things interesting. With his playing partner, Anthony Wall, leaking shots (he would eventually card a 77 to fall from second to 17th), Kaymer's front nine didn't produce a single birdie, but did feature a run of three successive bogeys from the fourth hole. The fault was a putter that failed to get the ball up to the hole.

As he walked to the seventh tee, Kaymer thought of what his brother, Philip, a plus-two handicapper who had caddied for him on tour a number of times last season and was watching at home in Germany , would say.

"He'd tell me to be aggressive. I was thinking about that when I left all the putts short. I thought, oh my gosh, he probably thinks you're an idiot . . . just go for it."

Still, when Kaymer, who had managed his first birdie on the 10th, bogeyed the 12th, it meant his lead over Westwood, who birdied the same hole in the group ahead, had been reduced to just two shots.

But Westwood couldn't find another birdie to put added pressure on Kaymer and, in fact, bogeyed the last.

So it was fitting that a birdie on the final hole should cement Kaymer's march to the title as he became, at 23 years and 24 days, the youngest German to win on tour. Bernard Langer was 23 and 38 days when he won the 1980 Dunlop Masters.

"I want to win more tournaments. Everybody is asking me if I want to play in the Ryder Cup. Of course I do, but I'm not really expecting it yet. The goal for the next year is always to win tournaments now."