Tour Championship 2021: Patrick Cantlay Earns Win, Clinches FedEx Cup Title

Patrick Cantlay has been on absolute fire in recent weeks. And he's the FedEx Cup champion because of it.

Cantlay won the Tour Championship on Sunday, shooting a one-under 69 to finish 21 under for the tournament, a solitary stroke ahead of Jon Rahm. Kevin Na (-16), Justin Thomas (-15), Xander Schauffele (-14) and Viktor Hovland (-14) rounded out the top five.

Just how hot has Cantlay been? He's now posted back-to-back wins, four wins in total on the season and has 15 straight rounds in the 60s.

So pretty darn hot.

Cantlay had a bit of an up-and-down day, with four birdies and three bogeys. He averaged a driving distance of 314.8 yards, had a driving accuracy percentage of 57.1, hit 77.7 percent of greens in regulation and lost 1.670 strokes putting, per PGATour.com.

Granted, he had some beautiful drives and shots:

This caps a career comeback for Cantlay. He went from being the top-ranked amateur player in the world in the 2011-12 season for a record 54 weeks before a back injury suffered in 2013—later diagnosed as a stress fracture in his L5 vertebrae—held him to just nine tournaments across three years. During that time, his best friend and caddie, Chris Roth, died in a hit-and-run when the two were walking across a street together in Newport Beach, California.

It wasn't until 2017 that he said he was able to play without physical pain again.

But Cantlay has persevered and emerged out the other side as one of the game's brightest stars.

"I think as tough as the tough times were, they made me who I am, and I'm a better person because of it," he said Sunday. "I can only thank all the people that really helped get me through that time to help me actually get here and get on the other side of it, and it feels really good to be here now."

And now Cantlay is thriving. His four wins this season were double any other player on the PGA Tour, putting him in pretty illustrious company:

Technically speaking, Rahm and Na tied for the lowest score of the tournament, shooting 266 in total (Cantlay shot a 269). But because of his excellent season, Cantlay opened the Tour Championship with a score of 10 under as the No. 1 seed, while Rahm opened the tournament at four under as the No. 4 seed.

The difference came down to last weekend's BMW Championship. While Cantlay closed that out with two straight 66s and won in a playoff, surging to the top of the FedEx rankings, Rahm finished with consecutive 70s and dropped to ninth at the tournament.

In other words, Cantlay got hot exactly when he needed to most.