Collin Morikawa, as befit his status as challenger, entered the ring first Sunday. He stood at East Lake’s first tee, peering downrange, staring down the perils of the single most difficult hole in this Tour Championship.
Then came the champ, making his rounds, shaking some hands first before coming up behind his playing partner. By way of greeting, Scottie Scheffler raised his right foot and gave Morikawa a surprise, playful little boot in the backside. Hardly a man eaten up with tension over what was at stake.
Then they began playing ... and the serious butt-kicking – going on pretty much all week anyway – continued.
Yes, there was a moment of trepidation, about a 30-minute span during which Scheffler hit perhaps the worst shot of his post-pubescent life and his comfortable lead broke out in a rash. But he applied a little three-birdie, one-eagle ointment to the problem, and that cleared right up.
In the end, like any good romcom romp, the Tour Championship played out just as it should. Every doubt erased. The two main characters – in this case a man and his shining legacy – happy together, just as fate would have it. The audience left feeling that sometimes life gets it right.
The year’s best player left East Lake Golf Club with the year’s biggest payout, a $25 million bonus now for winning this big hurrah at the end of golf’s playoffs. How so very tidy and fitting is that? A finish worthy of the Hallmark Channel.
Scheffler just had to win this one. For the record the final margin of victory was four over Morikawa, although it seemed like more. You couldn’t have a season like his end with anything less than a victory lap.
Just look at the numbers Scheffler left behind after winning Sunday. They are borderline monumental:
With his seventh PGA Tour victory, he became the first player since Tiger Woods 17 years ago to win as many as that. And still he wanted more. “I still don’t understand why the Olympics doesn’t count (as an official eighth win),” the gold-medal winner quipped Sunday. “That’s a bit weird to me. I think that’s part of the greed that goes on in your brain is you say seven, I’m like, no, I won eight.”
No one has led the FedEx Cup points race for as long as Scheffler did this year, 25 weeks.
And the money. Oh, my, the money. By any economic measure, the breadth of Scheffler’s 2024 is breath-taking. He earned a record $29 million in purse money, another $8 million bonus for winning the regular season points title. Now, hire a crane and drop another $25 million atop the pile.
The result has been inspiring the kind of talk from his peers that would have been considered heresy just a couple years ago.
“I think it is on par with those great years of Tiger’s,” said Adam Scott, who himself had a very stout finish here, T-4. “I think it’s very hard today for anyone to separate themselves as much as Scottie has. I don’t think we’ve seen that in a long time.
“We’ll look back on 2024 and it’s obviously one of the best individual years that a player has had for a long time,” added Rory (T-9) McIlroy
Sunday amounted to Scheffler signing his masterpiece.
This Tour Championship essentially was a Sunday match play event between Scheffler and the only man within hailing distance of him, Morikawa at five back to begin.
Just two holes in, Scheffler’s lead bulged to seven strokes.
We pick up action on the eighth green, because, frankly, attentions were beginning to wander a bit:
“Whatthehey? Did Scheffler just pull somebody out from the crowd to hit that shot for him?” That was the general sanitized reaction after he straight shanked a sand shot, shooting the ball nearly 90-degrees away from hole and off the green. The eventual result was his third bogey of the day, equaling the number he had in the first three rounds combined.
What happened next gave a glimpse into the core of what makes Scheffler special – his competitive resilience. Initially he was a little rattled, seeing Morikawa birdie the same hole and close within two strokes. “I kind of looked at (caddie Ted Scott) like, man, I don’t know about this; this isn’t looking so hot right now,” Scheffler said. After a pep talk from his man, Scheffler then drew a 4-iron and carved his tee shot to the 236-yard par 3 ninth five feet from the cup.
“Definitely a momentum switch in the round,” Scheffler said. Starting there, he rattled off three straight birdies – hitting his approach to three feet on No. 10 and draining a 15-foot birdie putt on No. 11. Then, just to fully restuff his cushion, he added the day’s only eagle on the par 5 14th.
“Just nothing fazes him,” Morikawa said. “Whether I was close in gaining some ground or he was gaining ground, it didn’t change how he walked or how he played or how he went through every shot. That’s something to learn. I think his mental game is a lot stronger than a lot of people know.”
For the week, Morikawa had a lower raw score than Scheffler (22 under to 20 under), but was done in by the staggered scoring system in which Scheffler came to this tournament with a built-in six-stroke lead over him. For those interested in footnotes, Morikawa shot 66 Sunday, Scheffler 67.
For Scheffler, this year included victories at the Masters, the Players Championship, the Memorial, and, yes, the Olympics. His first child was born. And for the first time, he was arrested after the famed parking lot misunderstanding at the PGA Championship. Come late Sunday, he seemed to wear all of it.
“It’s been a long year. It’s been a very fun year. I think emotionally right now I’m pretty drained. So I’m looking forward to going home and getting rest for a week,” he said, obviously weary.
The previous two Tour Championships denied Scheffler his due. As he did this year, he entered in 2023 and ‘22 with the best season going and the starting strokes to prove it. Being at least 2 up on everybody before the first shot was struck meant nothing in the end, someone else jumping up to claim the playoffs top prize.
Having put that behind him, he was now free to say just how much that irked him.
“If I’m going to be honest with myself, yeah, it definitely (bothered him),” he said. “I’ve been the Player of the Year for the Tour the last two years and I haven’t left with this trophy. It definitely, I think, leaves a bad taste in your mouth at the end of the year, especially when I start with the lead.
“Granted, it’s not a huge lead, but you’re starting the tournament ahead of people. You should win the tournament if I’m starting ahead of people. That’s how I feel. So maybe the last couple years I’ve put too much pressure on myself to perform or whatever it is, but this year I did a good job of just staying in it mentally and keeping my head down and just had a really good week and was able to finish it off the right way.”
No other ending would do.
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