Sunday afternoon at Wentworth Club in late September, where the sun is low and the leaves are beginning to rust. Everything is still and pristine, and into the light step two of the most aesthetically pleasing swings in golf. Rory McIlroy bounds to the first tee with a spring in his step, where Adam Scott is waiting with sleeves rolled up, sporting a deep tan over perfectly pressed cream trousers, with the air of a man who just berthed his yacht.

These golfers on this golf course on this beautiful late summer day? No wonder fans stacked three or four deep on all sides to catch a glimpse as the pairing moved through the grounds. McIlroy alone carries a magnetic attraction, of course, and here the entourage included a string of sweaty photographers and reporters, some burly security personnel, two police officers, the Everton midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and half the population of Surrey.

In the pleasant hubbub it was easy to forget the stakes here. McIlroy has not won at Wentworth since 2014 and desperately wanted to repeat the feat at this BMW PGA Championship, the DP World Tour’s flagship event. There was considerable prize money of more than £1m for the winner. And perhaps most significantly for McIlroy was the opportunity to close the gap to Patrick Reed in the Race to Dubai. It is a title McIlroy virtually owns having won it seven times, and there cannot be many people he would less like to watch take his crown than the American.

Reed, one of the gurning faces of LIV Golf before his exit in January, arrived here at Wentworth more than 800 points ahead of McIlroy, before pulling out with a hand injury. It opened the door: McIlroy needed to finish in the top two to move ahead of the American in the standings with only a handful of events remaining.

McIlroy began the day on 11 under par, two shots back from the overnight leaders in the thick of a packed leaderboard with 25 players inside five shots. After a disappointing Irish Open in which McIlroy finished tied-45th, he has refound some of his touch, particularly with his irons. But he ended this compelling Sunday tied second after wasting a series of makeable putts.

It had been a morning for extraordinary shots before McIlroy’s round began. Tyrrell Hatton hit a blind approach from the rough to within a couple of inches of the cup after piercing a gap between low-hanging branches and a bush. Frederic Lacroix aced the 14th from 163 yards to win himself a BMW iX5 xDrive 60 M Sport, to remind everyone who the sponsors are and that car names are getting out of hand.

McIlroy himself hit one for the highlight reel, manufacturing a banana hook from the trees on 12 reminiscent of his famous approach on the 15th at Augusta, arms wrapped around his body to generate that extreme right-to-left turn through the air, and it landed travelling sideways just shy of the green.

But the world No 2’s challenge frittered away with putter in hand. McIlroy had earlier missed good opportunities at two, three and five, and finished the front nine with two birdies when it might have been four or five. Then came a disastrous moment on 11 when he fatted a chip into a bunker as the club head snagged in soft, sandy soil where he expected firm ground.

McIlroy rallied, hitting that enormous hook to birdie the 12th. But he was always chasing and stretching to catch the leaders a shot or two out of reach. A birdie putt on 16 slid by the hole and McIlroy pulled off his hat in frustration as his challenge effectively ended. McIlroy finished ranked 76th in the field for strokes gained putting and was left to rue so many mistakes with the flat stick.

It was a familiar story, reminiscent of the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst and the 2022 Open Championship at St Andrews, when McIlroy spurned prime positions on Sunday with too many missed putts inside 10 feet. Here he recovered masterfully from wayward tee shots and the occasional missed green, but there is no recovery when the ball burns the edge and rolls by.

“I had my chances out there,” McIlroy said. “I wish I had some of those putts back, but I have to be encouraged with where my game is at.”

At that point it looked like Aaron Rai would triumph, until a late-round stumble. Then it seemed Spain’s unheralded 30-year-old Manuel Elvira might break clear of the rest. Elvira has played much of his golf in the shadow of older brother Nacho, a winner of three events on the DP World Tour, and this was the biggest day of the younger brother’s career.

Unfortunately nerves told as he missed putts on 14 and 15, and despite a brilliant eagle on 17, Elvira made a disastrous strategic decision to adopt a conservative approach on the par-five 18th and lay up on one of the easiest holes on the course. He made the cardinal sin of finding the fairway bunker, then duffed a chip and ended with a double bogey.

“It was devastating that I hit the wrong shot at the right time on the lay up and left myself the toughest shot in the fairway bunker, and wasn’t able to pull it off,” Elvira said.

Watching on was clubhouse leader JJ Spaun, who hugged his wife in celebration as the par Elvira needed to force a play-off slipped away. It has been an inconsistent season for Spaun since victory at the Texas Open in April, and a so-so day until a run of three successive birdies on 14, 15 and 16 propelled him to the top of the leaderboard on 16 under par. A birdie at the last earned Spaun a win by two strokes from McIlroy, Scott, Elvira and Rai.

“I played with a huge chip on my shoulder,” Spaun said of being overlooked as a captain’s pick for the Presidents Cup next week outside Chicago. “I definitely had something to prove this week, but everything happens for a reason.”

Tied second was enough for McIlroy to halve the points gap to Reed heading into the last events of the year. There may not be a Middle Eastern swing to this season’s European Tour at all, in the shadow of the war in Iran, so the Race to Dubai may in fact be a race to the final tournament of the season in – checks notes – Cheonan, South Korea, next month. Just as they did once upon a time in their epic Ryder Cup rivalry, McIlroy and Reed will fight to the bitter end.