Tiger Woods Wins 2018 Tour Championship at East Lake

Sep 23, 2018; Atlanta, GA, USA; Justin Rose holds the FedEx Cup and Tiger Woods (right) holds the the Calamity Jane a replica of Bobby Jones putter after winning the Tour Championship golf tournament at East Lake Golf Club.

Woods delivered the ideal ending to his fantastic return from four back surgeries on Sunday with a performance that felt like old times.

The run came with a mix of superb iron play and rock-solid putting, including a 21-foot birdie putt on the fourth. From there he had 206 yards to the green and sneaked his second shot onto the green.

Cheyenne Woods, Tiger’s niece, knows just how hard her famous uncle has worked to reach this point and what this title means to him, tweeting: “This is a special one”.

“But somehow I’ve been able to do that, and here we are”. He finished three clear of Billy Horschel and had galleries in their thousands, and millions watching worldwide, following his every move.

It’s good to have Tiger back in the win column and also, to all who said Tiger would never be any good again, where are you? “I was hitting it absolutely dead flush, the putts I was hitting were going in and from there I just tried to hang in there”. “It doesn’t matter who it is I’m playing with”.

A birdie on his opening hole extended Woods’ lead to four shots to give the former world number one a dream start. That’s a big difference.

Hobbled by back problems since 2014, Woods underwent spinal fusion surgery a year ago and returned to competition in December.

The victory was Woods’s first since his win at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in August 2013. I said: “Hey, I could blade this thing out of bounds”.

Woods had been a two-time former Tour Championship victor and now holds the record of winning 55 of 58 PGA Tour events when holding the 54-hole lead. “If I could somehow piece together a golf swing this year, I felt I could do it”.

Woods looked destined to surpass Nicklaus when he clinched his 14th major at the 2008 US Open before his career hit the rails after a sex scandal and then a debilitating back injury.

Start with the Ryder Cup, the biannual worldwide tournament which is being played outside Paris later this week. The players who have turns at No. 1 during his absence caught the full brunt of Woods in control. His advantage stretched to five before a loose tee shot at the par-three 9th triggered a bogey.

Woods shot 68 on Friday, after shooting 65 on Thursday.