His shoulders didn’t sag.
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Such a victory looked out of reach when McIlroy triple-bogeyed his third hole in the opening round to slip to four-over par on Friday, but he backed up his impressive long-game with a vastly improved putting display to clinch his 12th PGA Tour title and his first since winning the Wells Fargo Championship in May previous year.
The victory comes just a week after McIlroy changed his putter and his putting coach.
“I have got great memories of going to Crooked Stick – hopefully I can go and emulate what I did there”, said the 27-year-old of the IN course that stages the BMW Championship from Thursday.
“After three holes on Friday there was so much going through my head and none of those things involved sitting beside a trophy at the end of the week, so it’s just been incredible”.
For McIlroy, who has been restored to No3 in the world, 2016 will pass without a major title.
Not quite, but certainly a step in that direction.
McIlroy made it three straight birdies with an assured 10-foot putt at nine to complete an outward 31, although he mis-read a great chance from seven feet at the 11th before atoning at the next.
The win puts McIlroy back in the top three in the world rankings and savouring the next FedEx playoff event, the BMW Championship which starts on Thursday at Crooked Stick.
England’s Casey, 39, missed an eagle putt on the final hole at TPC Boston that would have forced a play-off. It went 8 feet by and he missed the meaningless birdie putt.
“It was a very simple fix”, he said.
“I struggled a bit from the get-go and it’s hard to regain rhythm and make your birdies if you hadn’t started out that way, so I found it incredibly difficult”, Casey said. “I battled well, did a lot of things brilliantly all week, but obviously frustrated”.
Casey, who was seeking his first PGA Tour win since 2009, began poorly with bogies at the 2 and 5th holes. The leading 70 after this weekend progress to next week’s BMW Championship, where the field will be reduced to 30 for the Tour Championship on 22-25 September. He collected a check for $1.53 million for the effort and the 2,000 FedExCup points moved him up to fourth place.
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McIlroy, 27, finished at 15-under 269 to move back to No. 3 in the world after slipping out of the top three earlier this year when Dustin Johnson won the U.S. Open, Henrik Stenson won the British Open and McIlroy kept sliding, largely because of his putting.
