That was nice and tidy.
It’s convenient when the winner of the Tour Championship also wins the FedEx Cup, and Sunday at East Lake Billy Horschel became the fifth straight player to take the PGA Tour’s season-ending double dip.
The three-stroke win over Jim Furyk and Rory McIlroy was Horschel’s second straight playoff victory, coming as it did on the heels of last week’s BMW Championship.
It helped him not only lift the Tour Championship trophy but also the FedEx Cup and the $10 million annuity that goes with it.
Horschel finished the playoffs with 12 straight rounds in the 60s thanks to some stellar long-distance putting that we’ll get to later.
He is the 12th man in the playoff era to shoot four rounds in the 60s in the Tour Championship and the first player to shoot four rounds in the 60s in three playoff events in the same season.
Four rounds in the 60s in the Tour Championship in the playoff era
| Year | Player | Scores | Finish |
| 2014 | Billy Horschel | 66-66-69-68—269 | Won |
| 2014 | Jim Furyk | 67-69-67-69—272 | T-2 |
| 2014 | Ryan Palmer | 69-67-69-69—274 | 7 |
| 2013 | Henrik Stenson | 64-66-69-68—267 | Won |
| 2013 | Dustin Johnson | 68-68-67-69—271 | 5 |
| 2013 | Zach Johnson | 69-68-69-68—274 | T-7 |
| 2011 | Bill Haas | 68-67-69-68—272 | Won |
| 2008 | Phil Mickelson | 68-68-69-69—274 | T-3 |
| 2007 | Tiger Woods | 64-63-64-66—257 | Won |
| 2007 | Scott Verplank | 66-68-67-68—269 | T-5 |
| 2007 | Vijay Singh | 68-68-65-69—270 | T-7 |
| 2007 | Rory Sabbatini | 68-68-67-68—271 | T-9 |
Most PGA Tour playoff events with 4 rounds in the 60s in the same year (*won tournament)
| Rounds in 60s | Player | Year | Tournaments |
| 3 | Billy Horschel | 2014 | Deutsche Bank, BMW*, Tour Championship* |
| 2 | Henrik Stenson | 2013 | Deutsche Bank*, Tour Championship* |
| 2 | Dustin Johnson | 2013 | Deutsche Bank, Tour Championship |
| 2 | Rory McIlroy | 2012 | Deutsche Bank*, BMW* |
| 2 | Tiger Woods | 2007 | BMW*, Tour Championship* |
| 2 | Steve Stricker | 2007 | Barclays*, BMW |
Tiger Woods is the PGA Tour’s postseason leader with five tournaments with every round in the 60s. Horschel now has three for his career and is tied with Adam Scott and Steve Stricker for second on the all-time list.
Horschel is also the only player to have four rounds in the 60s in three straight tournaments in 2013-14. (Nope, Rory McIlroy didn’t do it during his great summer stretch, having shot 71 in the final round of the Open Championship.)
Entering the PGA Tour playoffs, Horschel might have been the last golfer you’d expect to run the table and sweep through the Tour’s postseason. He was 69th in the FedEx Cup standings entering the playoffs and his best finishes all year were T-6’s at Memphis and the Hyundai T of C.
Worst position entering the playoffs of the eventual FedEx Cup champion
| Year | Player | Place entering playoffs |
| 2014 | Billy Horschel | 69 |
| 2012 | Brandt Snedeker | 19 |
| 2011 | Bill Haas | 15 |
And he was actually worse than that. A missed cut at The Barclays in the first post-season event didn’t inspire confidence and dropped him to 82nd in the standings.
Elimination loomed at the Deutsche Bank Championship, but he stepped up his game with a T-2 finish and led the field in all-around rank to move to 20th in points. He led the field in all-around rank again during his win at the BMW Championship (as well as strokes-gained putting) to climb to second in the standings.
At East Lake he was fifth in all-around rank while leading the field in greens in regulation and three-putt avoidance (he didn’t have one).
Billy Horschel’s stats the last three weeks of the PGA Tour playoffs
| Tournament | Distance | Accuracy | GIR | Strokes gained/putting | All-around rank |
| Deutsche Bank | 306.0 (T-10) | 67.86 (T-31) | 75.00 (T-7) | .951 (12) | 1 |
| BMW Champ. | 315.9 (9) | 64.29 (T-14) | 76.39 (T-2) | 2.975 (1) | 1 |
| Tour Champ. | 296.3 (12) | 51.79 (T-21) | 79.17 (1) | .815 (6) | 5 |
Horschel was in the top 10 in greens in regulation all three weeks, but where he really stood out in his stretch run was on the putting surfaces. Especially when he was staring down the hole from a distance.
He made three putts from more than 29 feet at the Tour Championship, including the decisive 16th hole Sunday, where he rammed one home for par from nearly 31 feet, resulting in a big fist pump.
It was a deserving coda to a two-week stretch that saw Horschel hole six of his eight longest measured putts of the season.
Billy Horschel’s longest putts made measured by ShotLink in 2013-14
| Tournament , Round, Hole | Distance |
| PGA Championship, round 2, hole 12 | 56 feet, 6 inches |
| Tour Championship, round 3, hole 2 | 50 feet, 3 inches |
| BMW Championship, round 1 hole 4 | 45 feet, 1 inch |
| BMW Championship, round 2, hole 18 | 41 feet, 4 inches |
| BMW Championship, round 3, hole 18 | 31 feet, 11 inches |
| Tour Championship, round 4, hole 16 | 30 feet, 9 inches |
| Humana Challenge, round 4, hole 4 | 29 feet, 9 inches |
| Tour Championship, round 1, hole 10 | 29 feet, 6 inches |
And therein lies Horschel’s key to success in the playoffs. He had been a successful short-range putter all season, finishing fourth on Tour in putts made from 4-8 feet and fifth on Tour from less than 10 feet.
But entering the BMW Championship he had made just eight putts from more than 25 feet all year and ranked 181st on the PGA Tour from long range.
In the last two weeks of the season Horschel not only maintained his success in the putts he should make, but he canned some of the bombs that he had been missing all year, nearly doubling his putts made from 25 feet or more by making seven in the two weeks (another 25 footer at East Lake is not on the list above).
That eventually earned him $1.44 million as the tournament winner, $10 million as the FedEx Cup champion, and nearly $13.5 million total during the postseason.
Final FedEx Cup standings
| Rank | Player | Points | Tour Champ. finish |
| 1 | Billy Horschel | 4,750 | Won |
| 2 | Chris Kirk | 3,100 | T-4 |
| 3 | Rory McIlroy | 3.050 | T-2 |
| 4 | Jim Furyk | 2,450 | T-2 |
| 5 | Bubba Watson | 2,285 | 14 |
So Horschel closes the book on the PGA Tour season for 2013-14. Tune in later in the week for a Stat Attack look at the year-end statistics.
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