ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler’s second FedEx Cup title, and his 22nd victory on the PGA Tour during this astonishing five-year run, was different from all the others, even if looked all too familiar. Scheffler celebrated with a beer. He had just closed with a 4-under 66 in the Tour Championship on Sunday — no one else from the leading six players broke par — and Scheffler had to wait for the last two groups to finish to make it official. “There was an open bar inside and I’m like, ‘All right, I’m grabbing a beer.’ It tasted great,” Scheffler said. “I don’t really drink often. My wife and manager were like, ‘Wow, I haven’t seen you have a beer in a long time.’ Well, season’s over now. I’m going to have a beer. Well-earned beer.” There was no arguing that, and there’s no longer a debate over who had the best season in golf. Scheffler took care of that at East Lake when he made up a three-shot deficit in four holes and pulled away to win the Tour Championship, claim a second FedEx Cup title and move past Tiger Woods for most PGA Tour earnings. Scheffler signaled his rally with a 5-iron to within 2 inches of the cup on the 211-yard second hole. He caught Viktor Hovland with a 25-foot birdie on the fourth hole, pulled ahead for the first time on the 13th and wound up with a three-shot victory. It was his first time with the low 72-hole score at the Tour Championship. When he won in 2024, he had a two-shot lead before the tournament began given to the No. 1 seed under the “starting strokes” format. He won by four shots, even though two other players had a lower actual score. That still bugs him. “When you’re coming down the stretch of a tournament and you’re tied or one shot back, it’s different than when you’re adding it up at the end and there’s starting strokes and all that stuff,” Scheffler said. “I think having a real tournament to finish the year, where I am the winner and the lowest score at East Lake, feels like a bit more of an accomplishment.” Scheffler won for the third time this year — twice in the last three weeks during the PGA Tour’s postseason — to match Chris Gotterup, Matt Fitzpatrick and U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark for most titles in 2026. Players vote on the Jack Nicklaus Award for PGA Tour player of the year. Scheffler has won the last four years — another would tie him with Woods for most consecutive awards. Taking over the top spot in career earnings was inevitable. The US$40 million purse at the Tour Championship now counts as official money. Scheffler won $10 million, pushing his career total to $130,390,661. Woods, who never played for more than a $10 million purse during his peak years from 1997 through 2009, had been at the top of the career money list for nearly 26 years. It was a small slice of redemption for Scheffler, who lost in a playoff to Hovland at the Travelers Championship, one of his five runner-up finishes this year. Hovland made only one birdie and closed with a 72 to finish alone in second, worth $5 million. Most aggravating for the Norwegian was having three putts hit the lip in a four-hole stretch on the back nine, two of them for birdie and one for par. “He’s just good, and he played good every day,” Hovland said. “I could have shot 66 easily as well today. Just didn’t have it. ... It wasn’t like anybody else really played all that great in contention, and that’s what you see — a lot of guys just gagging and throwing up. And that’s where he just kind of stays in it and shoots a nice score. That gets the job done.” Scheffler had two bogeys — one an aggressive miss with a wedge from the fairway on No. 7, the other from a gnarly lie in the rough on the 14th — and otherwise felt he didn’t miss much over a tough day of wind and firm turf that made the landing spots feel smaller. East Lake played to a cumulative average of 67.35 through three rounds. On Sunday, the average score was 70.07. Ryan Gerard, one shot behind Hovland staring out, made double bogey on the opening hole, followed with 13 straight pars and shot 72 to finish alone in third. “They made it as difficult as they could today, and that’s kind of what we were looking for,” Gerard said. “I just wasn’t on enough to execute shots to really tucked hole locations.” Scheffler said winning the Tour Championship for the FedEx Cup doesn’t change his outlook on the season. That’s for others to judge. Even so, he had a point to prove. He felt as though he had underachieved in the PGA Tour postseason — losing a six-shot lead to Rory McIlroy in 2022, not putting up much of a fight when Hovland won in 2023 when he started with a two-shot lead and finished 16 shots behind. “To come in this year maybe not winning the tournaments that I could have won throughout the regular season, to come in and win two out of three playoff events, is definitely a nice way to finish off the season,” Scheffler said. “That was my motto going into the playoffs. Maybe in years I’ve underperformed in the postseason, and maybe this is a year I’ll perform better than I have in the regular season.” That he did, and the beer no doubt went down smoothly. Doug Ferguson, The Associated Press
