ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler hit a 5-iron to within 2 inches of the cup on the 211-yard second hole at East Lake Golf Club on Sunday, according to The Associated Press, and the birdie started the round that won him the Tour Championship and a second FedEx Cup title.
Scheffler missed right off the first tee, hacked his second shot out of the rough, and hit a pitch to save par before reaching the second.
“That hole, and to that pin specifically, you have that big swale in front of it, and so you’re standing back down on the tee box,” Scheffler said at his post-round news conference. “You don’t really know where your golf ball is. In the practice round, they put the pin in that swale, and I actually had a very similar shot to what I did today. And it landed on the downslope and ended up over the green.”
“So today all you can do is execute the shot and see what happens after that, and I executed the shot the way I wanted to,” Scheffler continued. “You see the crowd kind of making some noise up there, you know the ball’s going to be in a pretty good spot. It definitely gives me confidence going forward to execute a shot the way you want to, especially early in the round.”
“To stuff one in there on the second hole the way I did on a difficult par 3 is really important, kind of giving momentum to the rest of the round,” Scheffler added.
Scottie Scheffler’s Round At East Lake
Scheffler counted the par at the first as half a shot gained on the field and the birdie at the second as a full shot. The first and the second both played into the wind, and he said the pin position made the opening hole an extremely difficult start.
Two of Scheffler’s first four holes went for birdie. He caught Viktor Hovland with a 25-foot putt on the fourth, per the AP, then dropped a shot on the par-4 seventh and got it back on the par-4 eighth. He made the turn at 2 under and picked up two more shots coming home.
Sunday’s 66 left Scheffler at 16 under. He did not hold the lead until the 13th.
Viktor Hovland And Ryan Gerard Finish Second And Third
Hovland, who led after 36 holes and after 54, closed with a 2-over 72 and finished second. Ryan Gerard, who shared the 36-hole lead with Hovland and played alongside him in the final group, also shot 2 over and finished third. Hovland collected $5 million and Gerard $3,705,000.
Of the 30 players in the field, only Robert MacIntyre at even par and Gary Woodland at 2 over finished the week at or above par.
The win was Scheffler’s 22nd on the PGA Tour and his third of 2026, following the American Express and the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Two of the three came in the last three weeks of the PGA Tour’s postseason.
The $10 Million Winner’s Share At East Lake
The winner’s share at East Lake was $10 million out of a $40 million purse. The Tour Championship purse now counts as official money, according to the AP, and the check moved Scheffler’s career total to $130,390,661, past Tiger Woods at the top of the PGA Tour’s career money list. Woods had held the top spot for close to 26 years. Through his peak years from 1997 through 2008, Woods never played for a purse larger than $10 million.
Scheffler, who turned 30 in June, was raised in Dallas and still lives there with his wife, Meredith, and their two sons. His most recent win in North Texas came at the 2025 CJ Cup Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney.
