Tiger Woods seals first win in five years
Two titles from Snead’s all-time record
Tiger Woods scored his first victory in more than five years on Sunday, completing a two-shot win at the Tour Championship to crown a fairy-tale comeback after a near two-year absence.
The 42-year-old 14-time major winner carded a one-over-par 71 at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Course to claim the 80th PGA Tour title of his glittering career, which moved him within two victories of Sam Snead’s all-time record of 82 PGA Tour titles.
Woods, who finished with an 11-under-par aggregate 269, raised his arms in delight after the victory, with several thousand fans ringing the green roaring their appreciation.
“I was having a hard time not crying coming up the last hole,” Woods said, whose most recent win before Sunday had come 1,876 days ago at the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
“I kept saying, ‘Hey, I could still play this out of bounds.’ But once I got the ball on the green, I gave [caddie] Joey [LaCava] a high-five because I knew it was done.”
It was an emotional finale to a year which saw Woods return to the highest level after he had once feared he may never play golf again.
The victory erased any last lingering doubts about Woods’ ability to compete at the highest level, something he had served notice of with top-10 finishes at the British Open and US PGA Championship.
Woods, who returned in January after missing almost the entire previous two years with a debilitating back injury, held a three-shot advantage heading into the final round.
A birdie on his opening hole extended Woods’ lead to four shots to give the former world No.1 a dream start.
With the remainder of the 30-man field struggling to make any inroads, Woods then played solid if unspectacular golf to keep a stranglehold on the lead.
A bogey on the 10th was a mere blip, with Woods re-establishing a five-shot cushion at 13-under after rolling in a 13-foot (3.97-meter) birdie putt on the par-four 13th.
Billy Horschel closed the gap to four shots after a four-under-par final-round 66, but Woods looked to be in control.
Woods, however, gave his army of fans a scare when back-to-back bogeys on the 15th and 16th holes cut his lead to two with two to play.
But he steadied the ship with a dogged par on the 17th and then closed out the win with a par on 18.
Meanwhile, England’s Olympic champion Justin Rose received a $10 million consolation prize in the form of the FedExCup, which is awarded to the winner of the tour’s season-long points race, after a birdie at the 18th gave him a 73 for a share of fourth.