Tiger Woods was widely expected to be in the hunt when it came to the crunch at the HSBC Champions on Sunday, but the frustrated American world number one had an off day.

Woods started the final round in joint second place, two shots behind eventual winner Phil Mickelson but faded to finish five strokes adrift after a round of 72.

Nothing went right, he said.

"Anything that could go wrong went wrong for me," he said. "Just one of those days where I didn't put it together at the right time."

He self-destructed with a double bogey on the fourth when he drove his ball into an adjacent canal and had to take a drop.

He recovered to leave himself with a four-foot putt for a bogey but the ball agonisingly bounced out of the hole and he lost two shots.

It didn't get any better with another bogey on the sixth, when his 10-foot downhill par putt ran five feet past the hole.

He was clearly getting frustrated and when a camera clicked as he was teeing off at the seventh and his shot found a bunker, he shouted "I just can't get a swing" and started swearing under his breath.

The seventh looked like finishing him. His shot out of the bunker found the rough and then he put himself in the sand again to drop another shot. Mickelson birdied that hole and Woods was six behind his arch rival.

But three consecutive birdies, on nine, 10 and 11, put him back in the hunt and two more on 14 and 15 raised his hopes before a bogey on the last summed up his disappointing day.

He said there was nothing wrong with his game, it was just not his day.

"No, just one of those days. I got off to a bad start early and battled back to eight-under-par for the day," he said.

"But then I got caught a little flyer there on the 18th and hit in the water."

Asked what he would do on Monday, he replied: "As of right now, I don't really plan on tomorrow. I just want to get out of here."

Woods, who has won 16 of the 30 World Golf Championships events he has entered, next heads to Melbourne, where he will play the Australian Masters.