Scottie Scheffler Wins FedEx Cup, Ruoning Yin Wins FM Championship
In this week’s “The Starter,” Scottie Scheffler turns a three-shot Sunday deficit into his second FedEx Cup, Ruoning Yin ends a 672-day wait for another LPGA Tour victory and Anna Nordqvist walks off an LPGA green for the final time with the Solheim Cup still in front of her. Golf handed out a trophy in Atlanta, another outside Boston and a long line of hugs at TPC Boston. The ceremonies marked one settled season, one broken winless stretch and a playing career that will give way to a captaincy in September.
PGA Tour: Scottie Scheffler Gives The Season Its Proper Finish
East Lake Turns Into A Chase
Scheffler began Sunday at East Lake three behind Viktor Hovland and one behind Ryan Gerard. His answer arrived quickly. A 5-iron at the 211-yard second stopped 2 inches from the hole, and a 25-foot birdie at No. 4 pulled him even with Hovland. Scheffler moved in front at the 13th, closed with a 4-under 66 and won by three at 16-under 264. Hovland and Gerard each shot 72, finishing second and third.
Anyone who saw only a familiar winner missed how Scheffler got there. East Lake firmed up, the wind strengthened and the rough made the fairways look smaller. Scheffler produced the lowest score of the day, tied with Alex Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele, because his best work came before the putter had much to decide. He led the field in strokes gained tee to green and on approach, and his proximity average of 30 feet, 4 inches ranked second.
The “Bad” Scheffler Season That Never Was
Scheffler’s 66 also complicated the idea that this was an off season. The label never fit the results. He won three times, finished second five times and recorded 13 top-five finishes in 20 starts. He made 19 cuts, and every made cut became a top-25 finish. A fifth consecutive Player of the Year award will be decided by a player vote, but the debate now has to account for both the volume of his contention and two wins in the final three weeks.
The victory was Scheffler’s 22nd on the PGA Tour and made him the third multiple winner of the FedEx Cup, joining Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. The $10 million first prize lifted Scheffler’s official career earnings to $130,390,661, moving him past Woods’ $120,999,166 on the all-time money list. That is a real record, though not a clean comparison of careers. Prize money and the Tour Championship purse belong to different economic eras. The more revealing number from this week is two: Scheffler has now erased a deficit of at least three shots on Sunday to win three times in the last three seasons.
The leaderboard behind him carried its own useful detail. McIlroy led the field with 23 birdies and also made the second-most holes of bogey or worse, finishing in a seven-way tie for fourth. Gerard placed third in his Tour Championship debut, while Fitzpatrick and Min Woo Lee were among the six first-timers and shared fourth. There was plenty of good golf behind Scheffler. Too much of it came with an expensive mistake nearby.
LPGA Tour: Ruoning Yin Ends The Wait
Yin Chooses The Green
At the FM Championship, Yin reached the 18th tee with a different kind of finish available. She had traded the lead through much of Sunday with Hyo Joo Kim and Sei Young Kim, making a birdie and two bogeys in her first four holes before birdies at Nos. 6 and 7 steadied the round. After another bogey at the 10th, she birdied the 12th and arrived at the par-5 closing hole with a one-shot lead. Hyo Joo Kim found a bunker. Yin chose the green.
Her 5-iron finished 18 feet away. Yin said she told herself to “just slow down and make a good tempo, make a good swing”, then two-putted for birdie and a 2-under 70. The two-shot victory at 14-under 274 was her sixth on the LPGA Tour and first since the 2024 Maybank Championship. She had gone 672 days without winning, long enough to admit afterward that she had wondered whether she could win on the Tour again.
Yin’s week was built on 24 birdies, the most in the field, along with 47 of 56 fairways and 55 of 72 greens, including all 18 during a second-round 65. Sunday was less tidy, with 12 greens hit and 30 putts, but the finish did not require a perfect round. It required the right decision after several hours in which the lead kept moving. Her seventh top-10 finish of 2026 had a trophy attached to it.
Solheim Cup Form Arrives On Time
The final leaderboard also supplied the U.S. Solheim Cup team with some encouraging form. Allisen Corpuz shot 68 to finish third, and Rose Zhang matched that score to tie for fourth. Zhang has spent the summer adjusting to full-time Tour life after completing her degree, so another late Sunday group mattered beyond a top-five check. She said it was good to know she could play under pressure again, especially with the matches at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands just over a week away.
Nordqvist Leaves The Scorecard Behind
Nordqvist will meet them there as Europe’s captain, but first she had to finish one last LPGA round. The 39-year-old Swede shot an even-par 72 and tied for 38th before players, caddies and LPGA Hall of Famer Pat Bradley greeted her by the ninth green. Nordqvist joined the Tour in 2009 and leaves regular competition with nine LPGA victories, three majors and nine Solheim Cup appearances. ‘I still have so much more left in me,’ she said, which sounded less like doubt about the decision than an honest description of how hard it is for a competitor to recognize the last scorecard.
Her playing career did not end with an empty calendar. The Solheim Cup runs Sept. 7-13 at Bernardus Golf, and Nordqvist has spent the last 18 months preparing the European team for that week. In the Netherlands, she will trade a scorecard for every decision that comes with a captaincy. Scheffler left Atlanta with a season settled, and Yin left Massachusetts with an old question answered. Nordqvist left the same property knowing her next job begins almost immediately.
The Closing Thought
Golf likes to present every 18th green as a conclusion, but the scorecard is more exact than that. Scheffler’s 66 clarified the season he had already built. Yin’s final birdie removed a question that had followed her for nearly two years. Nordqvist’s 72 closed the record of her playing career while leaving the most immediate part of her golf life unfinished.
The trophies will remain the easiest images from the week to remember. Nordqvist’s walk off the ninth may last longer. It showed that a finish can be completely real even when the person reaching it still has something to give. The scorecard closes. Golf, in her case, simply asks for a different kind of work next.