Rory McIlroy wins in Boston

His shoulders didn’t sag.

RORY McILROY dramatically overturned a six-shot final-round deficit to win the Deutsche Bank Championship by two strokes from Paul Casey.

And Sunday night was able to wrap them around another trophy and a championship belt.

“I think even finishing in the top 10 after that start on Friday would have been a very respectable result, but to be sitting up here and have won the tournament, I’m very proud of myself for that”, McIlroy said.

Of the improvement in his putting, McIlroy said it was still “a work in progress”.

“It’s definitely not the finished article, but it’s a big step in the right direction”, said McIlroy, who began the day six strokes off the lead.

The win has earned McIlroy a winner’s cheque of over 1.5 million dollars and sends him up to fourth place in the FedEx Cup standings.

In a strengthening wind from Hermine that penalized the slightest misses at the TPC Boston, McIlroy closed out the front nine with three straight birdies to take the lead for the first time, went ahead to stay with a 20-foot birdie on the 12th hole and left no doubt with a 3-wood into the wind and over the hazard on the par-5 18th hole that set up a birdie from the bunker.

Casey, who started the final round with a three-shot lead in his bid for his first PGA Tour victory since 2009, closed with a 73.

He had an eagle putt at the last to force a play-off, but ended up parring the hole.

He putted so poorly at the PGA Championship, where he missed the cut last month, that he sought help.

“Wow, very impressive. Yeah, that’s a might round of golf”, Casey said of McIlroy’s finish. “I’ve just not been as positive about the situation as I could have been. I battled well, did a lot of things brilliantly all week, but obviously frustrated”.

He already had four majors at age 25, including the U.S. Open scoring record (268) and the largest margin of victory (eight shots) in the PGA Championship.

A large group of players tied for eighth at nine-under, rounding out the top 10: Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Ryan Moore, Kevin Chappell, Jason Kokrak, Billy Hurley III and David Hearn. He finished in a tie for 57th, but has still done enough to move on to the next event.

The 27-year-old ended up shooting a level-par 71 in the opening round after ominously starting out par; bogey; triple-bogey.

The Northern Irish man – who started working with putting expert Phil Kenyon recently which was nearly an act of desperation to rescue a season hampered week in and week out by a misbehaving putter – was rock solid with the prototype Scotty Cameron mallet as he fashioned a closing 65 for a total of 269, 15-under-par, to claim a second title of the season to go with his Irish Open success.

It should also put an end to some of the criticism McIlroy has been facing over the last few months.

He didn’t need to make everything in the final round, with his driving and short game setting up three early birdies. You start to see lines better and you get into a little bit more of a flow and you’re not quite as static over the ball and your thoughts are more fluid and everything just sort of frees up a little bit. I came here off the back of a rough couple of weeks and I was thinking ‘Here we go again, ‘ and that it was going to be a little bit of a grind and a bit of a struggle. His last victory at the Deutsche Bank in 2012 was followed by another win at the BMW Championship at Crooked Stick, Indiana – the same venue for this year’s tournament.