They had turned East Lake upside down, flipping the nines this year looking to shake a little more fun and suspense out of Bobby Jones’ old playground.
Then the Tour Championship leadership took over Sunday and turned the place inside-out.
The result: Roars of the kind that really belong to a big-time championship, bouncing around that part of the property where in years past it was as silent as a vacant lot by the tournament’s twilight.
Groans, too. Deep, the-Dow-just-fell-300-points kind of groans as birdie and eagle putts swirled around the hole on the new No. 18 and were unceremoniously expelled.
It was all so thrilling that they couldn’t bring themselves to stop playing these new finishing holes. Three men entered a playoff with both the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup on the line. After four extra holes, one man left with all the titles and a good chunk of the money.
Rory McIlroy, staging a bold move that will be the signature of the new course configuration for, oh, forever, outlasted first Kevin Chappell and then Ryan Moore over the long playoff to capture the tournament purse of $1.5 million plus another $10 million that was just laying around for the champion of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
It was decided on the long par-4 16th, the same hole on which McIlroy made himself a threat way back in regulation when he holed out from 137 yards for eagle. This time, squinting to see where his approach landed as the setting sun bathed his face, he settled for birdie from 14 feet.
The stubborn Moore had tried to prolong matters even more by making a clutch 17-foot par-saving putt on the hole. “I just wanted to make him earn it, for that much money, at least,” Moore said.
But McIlroy determined they had played long enough.
“I’ve made no secret that (the FedEx Cup) is one of the last things I feel like I had left on my golfing (goals),” the four-time major champion said.
And what of Dustin Johnson, the fellow who came in here No. 1 in FedEx Cup points and who led this tournament so doggedly for three days?
Well, in the bad ol’ times for East Lake, back 30 years or so, back when the golf course was part of a crime-ridden community not affectionately called “Little Vietnam,” tales were born of players robbed in mid-round. Of watches and wallets snatched.
That was nothing. Johnson just had $10 million lifted out there Sunday. His long drives went errant, as he missed eight of 14 fairways, he went north of par for the first time this week (73) and finished in a tie for 6th. Johnson, however, still would have claimed the $10 million bonus had either Moore or Chappell won the playoff.
No beating the McIlroy when the player who has once ruled this world showed himself again over the back side (a 5-under 30), needing every bit of that eagle and then a birdie out of the bunker on 18 to make it to the playoff.
Of the eagle, a two-bouncer that took a hard right spin to the hole, McIlroy said, “When something like that happens, you have to make the most of it. The holed shots from the fairway, it’s part skill, but there’s an epic part of luck in there as well.”
Meanwhile, fortunes swung like a broken shutter in a gale over the final holes, per the schemes of those who reimagined East Lake.
Chappell’s par saving putt on No. 17 wanders wide, and he loses a one-stroke lead.
Moore’s potential 8-foot winning, birdie putt went 3/8ths down the final hole of regulation and out again.
McIlroy’s 6-foot putt for eagle the first time they played No. 18 in the playoff lipped out, and left him very momentarily limp. He and Moore advanced with birdies while Chappell, with a par, was asked to leave.
Moore lost on a day in which he shot 64 over regulation and made not a single bogey even with all the extra holes. “It was fun. Honestly, I was having a blast out there,” he said, echoing the sentiment of those on the other side of the ropes.
McIlroy won in a year that was far from his best. In 2012 for instance he came here having won a pair of playoff events and a PGA Championship by eight shots and left as an afterthought. This time, he was just outside the top five, with one Tour win and requiring the kind of help Johnson provided on Sunday.
And when all the noise subsided Sunday one quiet query remained: What exactly took them so long to turn this course around?
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