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It was only a matter of time before Scottie Scheffler pulled it off again.
After a season full of near-misses and second-place finishes, the top-ranked golfer in the world absolutely ran away with the FedEx St. Jude Championship on Sunday. Scheffler posted a final-round 66 at TPC Southwind in Memphis, which ended up giving him a massive eight-shot victory to open the PGA Tour’s playoffs.
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The win not only earned Scheffler a $3.6 million check, but it also solidified his spot stop of the FedExCup standings with just two tournaments left on the schedule.
Scheffler has been firmly at No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings and the FedExCup standings throughout the year, but he’s struggled to actually win on Tour since his season-opening victory back in January. Since then, Scheffler has finished in second five times, including in his last start at the 3M Open. A pair of those runner-up outings came in the form of a playoff loss, too.
While 11 top-10 finishes and a win is hard for anyone to complain about, it felt like a weird step back for the man who had dominated golf in vintage Tiger Woods-like fashion over the past several seasons.
But finally this week, things clicked again.
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Scheffler took the 36-hole lead at the midway point of the tournament, and entered Saturday with a three-shot advantage. That was cut back to just a single stroke after his 2-under 68 on Saturday, which set him up in the final pairing with Sam Burns. But that was all that Scheffler needed to work with.
Very quickly, Scheffler managed to push his lead to five shots by the time he made the turn on Sunday. He only went 1-under in his opening-nine, too, which was marred by a chip-shot that flew into the water after drilling a sprinkler head.
At the time of his sprinkler head hit, his lead was down to just a single stroke.
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But by the time he sank a nearly 20-footer for birdie, just his third of the day at the time, that lead was suddenly six full shots. The tournament was over even before Scheffler added two more birdies the rest of the way just for good measure.
Scheffler has now won 21 times in his career on the PGA Tour. All but six of those wins have come over the past three seasons, too. Scheffler is now just the fifth golfer in past 40 years to record multiple wins by eight or more strokes in his career.
And his putter, which had been an issue just a few weeks ago, seemed completely fixed. He made 14 putts of more than 10 feet throughout the tournament, well more than anyone else in the field and the most in a single tournament in his career. In total, he gained more than nine shots on the green.
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Si Woo Kim finished alone in second at 9-under for the week. Alex Noren and Burns tied for third at 8-under.
Rory McIlroy finished way back alone in 66th in what was his worst finish of the season this week, though he’s still safely into the field next week in St. Louis. Jordan Spieth, however, stumbled late to fall outside of the top-50 despite his T19 finish.
There is still plenty of golf to be played before the FedExCup trophy is handed out later this month at East Lake in Atlanta. And with the Tour Championship moving away from the old staggered starting strokes format, the FedExCup title is very much up for grabs.
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But with the way he played this week, Scheffler has clearly found his dominant game once again after it had eluded him for months. And stopping Scheffler when he’s in that groove, as he’s proven time and again, is nearly impossible to do.
