ATLANTA – Rory McIlroy pulled off an improbable comeback, rallying from six strokes back to knock off World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler with a final round 4-under 66 at East Lake Golf Club to win the Tour Championship.
McIlroy became the first player to win the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour’s season-long competition, for the third time. He did it in dramatic fashion, authoring the largest final-round comeback in Tour Championship history and finishing at 21-under, one-stroke better than Scheffler and Sungjae Im, and claimed the top prize of $18 million.
“What a week, what a day. I feel like Scottie deserves at least half of this today,” McIlroy said. “I feel sort of bad that I pipped him to the post. He’s a hell of a competitor and an even better guy. It was an honor and a privilege to battle with him today. I’m sure there will be many more. I told him we’re 1-all in Georgia. He got the Masters and I got this.”
The Northern Irishman spotted Scheffler six strokes in the staggered-start scoring system implemented at the Tour Championship. McIlroy gave him an even bigger head start by pulling his opening tee shot of the tournament on Thursday out of bounds and made triple bogey at the first and bogey at the second to fall 10 strokes behind.
“I got off to the worst start possible,” said McIlroy, who said he thought of South Korea’s Tom Kim, who opened the Wyndham Championship with a quadruple bogey and went on to win.
“It is possible,” McIlroy said after rallying to shoot 67 on Thursday. “Anything can be done.”
He chipped away at Scheffler’s lead with another 67 on Friday and then made his move on Saturday. After the third round was suspended for the day due to lightning, McIlroy returned Sunday morning and made birdies on his final two holes to cap off a round of 7-under 63.
“It’s a perfect way to end the round,” McIlroy said.
Still Scheffler, who made four birdies in his final six holes of the third round, entered the final round with a six-stroke cushion. It disappeared quickly.
“Everybody talks about how fun it is to win. It’s not,” NBC’s Paul Azinger said. “It’s the hardest thing in the world to do. It’s only after the fact that it’s fun.”
On a bright, steamy day, McIlroy stumbled again at the first hole but bounced back with four birdies in a five-hole stretch beginning at the third. Trying for his fifth win of the season, Scheffler struggled to three bogeys in his first six holes.
“This is a disaster,” Azinger said after Scheffler flubbed a flop shot into a greenside bunker at No. 6. “It’s hard to watch this happen to a guy of this pedigree, this caliber. This was always going to be a hard day for him, a hard weekend, and he’s really feeling the heat now.”
McIlroy made birdie one hole later to tie for the lead. But Scheffler wouldn’t go down without a fight. He stuck his approach to 5 feet at No. 8 to regain the lead. McIlroy knotted the tournament again with a short birdie at No. 12, but surrendered a stroke when he failed to get up and down at 14. He got the stroke back in dramatic fashion, sinking a 32-foot birdie putt one hole later and sending the pro-McIlroy gallery into a frenzy. For the day, McIlroy was the top putter, gaining more than four strokes on the field on the greens.
The lead belonged to McIlroy one hole later when he made a 7-foot par putt to stay 21 under and Scheffler, who closed in 3-over 73, missed from 9 feet and failed to birdie the last. Scheffler tied for the worst round of the day in the 29-man field.
Despite a double bogey at 14, the 24-year-old South Korean Im birdied two of his last four holes to shoot 66 and concluded his most successful season to date with quite the payday. He took home $5.75 million for finishing tied for second.
“My goal this week was to finish top 5, and to be finishing this high up is very unexpected,” Im said. “I’m glad how everything came out together.”
