Tiger Woods wins TOUR Championship, but Justin Rose holds FedEx Cup

Tiger Woods, amidst legendary throngs of fans, held on to win the TOUR Championship, five years after his last victory. He nearly won the FedEx Cup title, but that honor went to Justin Rose on the Englishman’s final hole.

A year ago, nobody would have believed it possible. Tiger Woods, in the last official PGA Tour event of the 2018 season, notched his 80^th PGA Tour victory and his third Tour Championship. It was amazing to watch. After four back surgeries, after a time 12 months ago when he thought he might never play golf again, Woods was able to cobble together a new swing, find new equipment that would support it and structure a schedule that allowed him to play. Most importantly, he has now won.

It was an emotional victory for Woods and for the fans who cheered his every move. He held back tears while on the 18^th fairway.

“It’s certainly up there with obviously all the major championships I’ve won, Players, World Golf Championships. But this is under different circumstances,” Woods said to media after the final round. “I just didn’t know whether – when this would ever happen again.”

Woods said that only the people closest to him during this most recent comeback knew what he had experienced. He did not name names. He recalled the difficulties he had a year ago.

"“Probably the low point was not knowing if I’d ever be able to live pain-free again,” he admitted. “I just didn’t want to live that way. This is how the rest of my life is going to be? It’s going to be a tough rest of my life. And so – I was beyond playing. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t lay down without feeling the pain in my back and my leg. That was a pretty low point for a very long time.”"

Now, Woods is once again a PGA Tour champion. In the process, we saw flashes of the old Tiger Woods. During the Tour Championship, he did to Rickie Fowler, Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy what he had done in previous decades to Davis Love III, Ernie Els and countless others who challenged him in his prime.

As Peter Jacobsen said during the Sunday NBC telecast, “He seems to suck all the air out of the pairing.” And it was true this week.

While most say this validates his comeback, Woods believes that just being able to live a life without pain was the real comeback. The rest is icing on the cake for him.

When the final round began, really, Woods just needed to not lose shots. Nobody thought about him winning the FedEx Cup because his chances were so slim. But on the back nine, it looked like he could – would- win both. The last man standing, the one who stopped Woods from getting the FedEx Cup was the man he played against Saturday, Justin Rose, the No. 1 player in the world.

“I think back of 14 is where I just sort of had this gut-check moment really,” Rose explained to media after winning the season-long award. “I was over the back of the green facing double-bogey in the face there and had a really good up-and-down to get to 6-under. And I knew 6-under was going to be the magic number for me.”

He could see from the on-course leaderboards that 6-under was going to be a 4^th place finish. But he bogeyed the 15th, and he was in trouble again.

“I knew I had to birdie one of the last two, and I actually said to myself, I’m glad we’re playing East Lake this way around, because if I had to birdie 17 or 18 the other way around, it would have been a pretty tough proposition,” Rose explained. The nines were flipped a couple of years ago so that the last hole is a par 5 instead of a par 3.

It was not easy going, though, because he was playing right in front of Woods and the pro-Woods gallery.

More from Pro Golf Now

“It was awkward out there, really, today,” Rose noted about the situation on the last two holes. “Clearly, as I was bringing Tiger into the FedEx Cup equation, you could sense that the crowd knew that, too, and were pulling for the double.”

When Rose was on the 18^th green, Woods had hit his tee shot and was coming down the fairway. Rose was looking for a time with less commotion, but he knew it was going to be hard to find.

“The way things were panning out and playing out I had a few, like 20 seconds there, where I felt like this is as calm as it’s going to get and now is the time to go,” he said about putting at the last hole. “I’m glad it was an easy two-putt.”

Rose was correct about the crowds. All day, the golf course sizzled with Woods followers. From first hole to last, they were ten and more deep along the rope lines. As Woods walked down the 18^th hole, they chanted “Ti-ger.. Ti-ger ..Ti-ger!” They knew he was going to win. They knew they were seeing history.

Next. Tiger Woods calls comeback 2018 season one of his best ever. dark

For Rose, probably the best thing was that he was not playing with Woods. That alone may have allowed Rose to concentrate on the Cup. He was able to birdie the final hole to secure fourth place which gave him the title FedEx Cup Champion.

Justin Rose deserves his moment in the sun. His ascent to the top of the golf world after 21 years is nothing short of remarkable. But Sunday clearly belonged to Tiger Woods, who – if only for a moment – rekindled the love of golf in so many millions around the world.

Home/Golf News