the $10 million first-place prize <\/a>with a win at East Lake. No more starting strokes, no more points compilations \u2014 just win, baby. It wasn\u2019t exactly fair to Scheffler, who had been dominant all season, but then NFL teams don\u2019t get a head-start in the Super Bowl, and NBA teams don\u2019t get granted a one-game lead in the Finals.<\/p>\nThat meant every player had a chance, and by far the most compelling story \u2014 and the one which brought out celebrity Twitter fans like Caitlin Clark and LeBron James \u2014 belonged to Fleetwood, the 34-year-old from England. For most of his career, Fleetwood has held the rep of amiable, talented bloke, always in the mix but never really in the hunt. Since 2017, he\u2019s recorded top-5 finishes in all four majors, seven in all. Outside of being famous for not winning stateside, his most notable achievements have come in the Ryder Cup, where he and Francesco Molinari were an unstoppable duo in 2018, and where he scored the decisive point in 2023.<\/p>\n
More recently, he\u2019s suffered heartbreak in both the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the Travelers Championship, holding a lead deep into Sunday before surrendering it to Justin Rose and Bradley, respectively. So when he reached Sunday\u2019s back nine with a three-shot lead, well, Fleetwood officially entered heartbreak-or-triumph territory once again.<\/p>\n
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But things immediately turned grim for Fleetwood, as Cantlay pulled off a two-shot move, birdieing the 10th while Fleetwood bogeyed it. Just like that, Fleetwood\u2019s three-shot lead was down to one with eight long holes to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he gets it done today, that would be amazing. I think we’d all love him to,\u201d said Rory McIlroy, who finished at -6 hours before Fleetwood reached the 18th. \u201cBut if for some reason he doesn’t, I think we all know it’s only a matter of time. He’s playing so well. He’s been so consistent for so long. But look, I really hope he gets it done today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fearsome Scheffler, trying to become the first back-to-back winner of this tournament, drew within two strokes of Fleetwood with a birdie on the 14th \u2026 but immediately dunked his tee shot at 15 into the water. That led to a double-bogey and effectively ejected him from contention.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at this week, I felt like I could have been a little sharper the last few days to give myself a better chance,\u201d Scheffler said after his round. \u201cBut overall, now I have a little time to reflect on the season, and it was a really good year.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bradley made a run until he, too, found the water at 15. Henley could never get much going to make a charge, Cantlay backed up every birdie with a bogey, leaving it Fleetwood against himself.<\/p>\n
“You’re always kind of aware, no matter how present you try and stay, you’re always kind of aware of the ebbs and flows of how it’s going,” Fleetwood said after the round. “The door was getting further and further open for me as the round went on, and [I was] sort of trying to stay level-headed about it.”<\/p>\n
After that bogey at 10, he birdied the 12th and 13th to extend his lead back to three strokes with four to play, providing some comfort heading into the wicked 15th. He took the bogey there, then just needed to keep the wheels on over the final three holes to collect the biggest paycheck of his career. Three pars later, the victory was his \u2014 the first in his 164 career PGA Tour starts. He’s the 18th different player from England to win on the PGA Tour, and the second FedEx Cup champion from England, after the 2018 win of Justin Rose … who stuck around to watch Fleetwood’s moment of triumph.<\/p>\n
Cantlay, per usual, was taciturn and straightforward. \u201cI played solid overall,\u201d he said. \u201cCan take a lot of good things from this week going forward.\u201d He now awaits Bradley\u2019s decision for a slot on the United States\u2019 Ryder Cup team, but he appears on solid footing for a roster slot.<\/p>\n
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The PGA Tour season is now over, bringing to a close a remarkable run of tournaments and winners that helped the tour regain its ratings and competitive footing after several years of struggle. Still ahead: the Ryder Cup, where Fleetwood, Scheffler and another 22 of their teammates will do battle at Bethpage Black.<\/p>\n
For now, though, Fleetwood can celebrate a hard-won victory at long last. “I think it’s easy for anybody to say that they are resilient, that they bounce back, that they have fight,” he said. “It’s different when you actually have to prove it.” At long last, he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 You keep kicking at the door long enough, and one day you\u2019re going to break it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,6554,755,15813,7896,64382,1747,6931,1657,85,64177,42347],"class_list":{"0":"post-101660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-caitlin-clark","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-keegan-bradley","13":"tag-lebron-james","14":"tag-patrick-cantlay","15":"tag-pga-tour","16":"tag-russell-henley","17":"tag-scottie-scheffler","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-the-tour-championship","20":"tag-tommy-fleetwood"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Tommy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/c9f98610-812d-11f0-befd-b1213497a07d.jpeg\"\/)
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