Subtitled: “Misadventures in building your tour event’s field.”

The Abu Dhabi Golf Championship got a fair bit of attention before it began, for two reasons, as I noted a few days ago: It included the world’s two highest-ranked players, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

And then it went horribly wrong.

It was easy to see what organizers were thinking: “We get Tiger and Rory, and Martin Kaymer and Ernie Els, and whoever else shows up from the European Tour … and we’re good to go!”

A year ago here, it had worked like a charm. Tiger and Rory were in the final group on Sunday, and were in contention down to the final holes before Robert Rock snuck in and won. The event had record attendance and, presumably, great TV viewership, too.

A year ago, rumor had it that Tiger Woods was paid an appearance fee of $1.5 million, and this week, after a year in which he won three tour events in the U.S. and had seen his ranking climb back up, he was given $3 million just to show up.

What Rory was paid was not clear, but his popularity in the UAE, which skews British Isles in its golf preferences, is such that it had to be serious money. “At least $1 million and probably more” seems a fair estimate.

And then, back on Monday, Rory signed with Nike — which also has Tiger as a client — and we have taken to calling that an “eight-figure” deal. And Rory was eyeball deep in cash, and maybe a bit distracted from the task at hand.

Anyway, this might have worked. Perhaps should have worked.

Tiger and Rory were placed in the same group the first two days, along with Kaymer, a three-time winner of the event, and the two stars got off to rocky starts on Thursday, which was not part of the script, but that didn’t keep a large crowd from turning up on Day 2, Friday, and following around those three guys.

That’s when it all came off the rails.

Rory struggled throughout, and at one point he discarded his new putter for his old one, which presumably did not go unnoticed in Beaverton, Oregon (home of Nike), and he missed the cut by two strokes.

Not good.

Tiger also was erratic, but he made five birdies in a nine-hole stretch, and he appeared to have made the cut by a stroke.

Until officials investigated an incident in the weeds on the fifth hole, and Tiger was assessed a two-stroke penalty — which put him on the wrong side of the cut, too. For the first time in 22 European Tour events.

Disaster.

The National’s golf writer, Steve Elling, described the incidents in this story, and the photo shows Tiger looking for his ball and Kaymer watching, and it was the latter who apparently told Tiger he thought it was OK to move the ball … but it wasn’t, and Tiger got the bad news in the scoring tent — and on the way out he said he had been thinking he could win with a couple of good days on the weekend.

Just like that, golf’s two leading personalities (and who is No. 3? I mean, really) were gone from the tournament.

One of our staffers, Osman Samiuddin, followed the superstars around on Friday, and in his piece he makes clear just how compelling those two guys are — and Tiger more than Rory, still — and how un-compelling is everyone else.

The toll of their early departures became clear today.

Practically no one showed up for Round 3.

Saturday ought to be even bigger than Friday, for attendance, and was a year ago — but not when the two leading personalities are gone. The course was described as “a ghost town”.

Justin Rose, ranked No. 5 in the world, led after three days, but Rose is as exciting as warm milk.

Thus, the tournament will sputter out tomorrow, gone from the radar like a satellite that has flamed out.

For a tournament to bank on Rory and Tiger (and send them to the bank) … a good idea, in theory. This time around, not so much.