ABU DHABI CHAMPIONSHIP:CHANGED DAYS indeed for Rory McIlroy, who not so long ago had to sneak inside the fairway ropes to steal a closer look at Tiger Woods. Today the Northern Irishman will have the best seat in the house when the defining golfer of a generation begins the season.

The pair played a practice round together here on Tuesday and, with Luke Donald, will spend the first two rounds of the Abu Dhabi Championship in each other’s company. “Not exactly low profile,” is McIlroy’s assessment of the tournament draw.

Not exactly, although the world number three isn’t complaining.

“There’s not many tournaments where you get really excited about a Thursday or a Friday, but this is one of these times. It will definitely get the juices flowing.”

Hopefully, the same will be said about galleries.

Professional golf might have gravitated towards the Middle East in recent years but that is more a reflection of corporate pursuit of oil dollars than of local taste. Golf as a spectator sport remains a margin pastime in Abu Dhabi, although Woods’s presence this week is expected to bump up ticket sales.

No prizes, then, for guessing which three-ball will attract the biggest galleries today or which player of the three will garner most attention. Woods’s lustre may have diminished in recent times but he remains the sport’s pre-eminent draw – a fact acknowledged by McIlroy, the heir presumptive to the American’s status as the game’s most recognisable figure.

The king is dead, long live the king? No way, suggests McIlroy. Woods is still the man to measure yourself against. “Growing up and watching Tiger for the last 15 years he was the face of golf for a long, long time. He still is the face of golf. He set the benchmark for a lot of guys – no one may play the way he did in 2001. He’s still the main attraction in 2012.

“I see him contending again in Majors. I practised with him and he looked in good shape. He seems determined and looks at full fitness. It can only be good for the game. Hopefully I can get in the mix with him down the stretch on a few Sundays.”

For the moment, McIlroy (22), from Holywood, Co Down, will have to content himself with trying to beat Woods over four rounds of the brutishly long National course at the Abu Dhabi golf club.

That should be eminently possible, not least because while the former world number one has never played here before, McIlroy has managed three top-five finishes here.

He has also spent the last couple of weeks in Dubai fine-tuning his game for the new season. Given his grandstand finish to 2011, when he won twice in Asia against high-quality fields, it is hard to imagine much fine-tuning is needed, although he apparently believes he will step on to the tee in better form than ever.

“There were a couple of things I felt I could do a little better, with my posture and with the position of my club at the top of my backswing, and I feel they are clicking into place. This week will be a good gauge of how things are coming along.”

If, as he suspects, things are coming along, then it is hard to imagine anyone beating McIlroy come Sunday afternoon. If not, there are plenty of others who will happily deny him a victory to open the 2012 season – Martin Kaymer for one.

The German has won this tournament three times. After a few lost months spent trying to change his swing, he recaptured the form that briefly made him world number one with a victory in Shanghai last November.

“There’s just something about this place I really, really like,” he says. “I can’t wait to get started.”

Luke Donald is another for whom the 2012 season cannot come quickly enough. The Englishman is under pressure to sustain the form that elevated him to world number one last year, although if the prospect terrifies him, he is hiding it well.

Once upon a time, his knees might have buckled at the news he would be playing alongside Woods, as happened in the final round of the 2006 PGA Championship in Chicago. Not any more.

“I am a much more experienced player now,” Donald says when asked to look back on that afternoon at Medinah Country Club when Woods gave him a lesson. And, the confident Englishman might have added, he is a much better player too.