ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler capped the best year in golf in nearly two decades by winning the sport’s biggest prize.

Scheffler was briefly challenged on Sunday at the Tour Championship but responded with three straight birdies to make victory as inevitable as it had seemed all year. He closed with a 4-under 67 for a four-stroke win over Collin Morikawa to win the FedEx Cup and its $25 million prize, the richest in golf.

That brought his seasonal earnings, including bonuses, to just under $62.3 million.

It was the best year since Tiger Woods won eight times in 2006, including six in a row and two majors, while coping with the death of his father. Scheffler’s eight victories included the Masters, The Players Championship, an Olympic gold medal and the Tour Championship, which finally allowed him to claim the FedEx Cup.

His seven PGA Tour titles are the most since Woods in 2007.

“We look back at 2024 and it was clearly one of the best individual years any player has had in a long time,” said Rory McIlroy.

Scheffler took the drama out of the final hour – four of his wins this year have been by three strokes or more – and finally let out a “WOOO!!” as he walked in to sign his card. He held up two large trophies, the silver FedEx Cup and his 4-month-old son, Bennett.

The birth of his first child, his bizarre arrest in Louisville, Kentucky, before the second round of the PGA Championship, another Masters green jacket, Olympic gold. It was a season Scheffler and other golf fans won’t soon forget.

“This has been a challenging week,” Scheffler said during the trophy presentation. “I’m exhausted right now.”

This was the third straight year that Scheffler came to East Lake as the top seed, meaning he started the tournament at 10-under par with a two-stroke lead. Two years ago, he lost a six-stroke lead in the final round to McIlroy.

Scheffler led by at least five shots after each round. But there was a heartbreaking moment when storm clouds began to gather. He made two consecutive bogeys, the second on a sheer shank of a bunker on the reachable par-4 eighth hole. Morikawa birdied it, and the seven-stroke deficit he had held after two holes was reduced to just two with 10 holes to play.

And then it was over.

Scheffler hit 4-iron to 5 feet on the par-3 ninth for birdie. He wedged to 3 feet on No. 10 for birdie, then banked in a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-3 11th.

“He’s not going to just make bogeys after that,” Morikawa said of the Scheffler shank. “He’s going to do the opposite and he’s going to hit golf shots. It took his focus back almost half a second, and that’s something you can’t teach.”

Just like that, his lead was back to five strokes. And when he hit a 15-foot eagle putt on the 14th hole, it was a matter of crossing the finish line.

Scheffler called the FedEx Cup a season-long race and was “stupid” because everything hinged on the final week at East Lake. There was no doubt that the FedEx Cup had a very capable champion.

Scheffler has finished outside the top 10 only three times in his 19 starts, with two runner-up finishes and seven PGA Tour titles.

“He’s the guy you have to beat every week,” Justin Thomas said. “I don’t think people understand how hard it is, when you’re expected to win, when you’re the favorite to win, when everything you do is being watched — good and bad — on the golf course, and how hard it is to get into your own little zone and your own little world and really tune out the noise.”

Morikawa, the seventh-seeded player who began the tournament six strokes behind, finished with a 66 and had the lowest score of the Tour Championship at 22-under 262. He won $12.5 million for his runner-up finish in the FedEx Cup.

“Being six strokes down was tough against the best player in the world,” Morikawa said. “I tried.”

Sahith Theegala, who took a two-stroke penalty on Saturday for possibly touching a small amount of sand on a bunker shot, closed with a 64 to finish third. He finished two strokes behind Morikawa and earned a $7.5 million bonus for third place.

Adam Scott, who finished tied for fourth, turned pro during Woods’ heyday in 2000 and hasn’t shied away from comparisons to Scheffler because of his consistent fighting spirit.

“I think it’s similar to those great years of Tiger,” Scott said. “I think it’s very hard today for someone to stand out like Scottie did. I don’t think we’ve seen that in a long time. I think it’s harder to do that today.”

And to think that Scheffler was only asked about his putting five months ago, when it was almost a year ago that he last won his PGA Tour title (he won the unofficial Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas).

His season earnings of $29,228,356 represented approximately 9.2% of the total prize money from tournaments he played in. Woods won approximately 11.6% of the total prize money from tournaments he played in in 2000, still considered one of the best seasons ever.

The $25 million FedEx Cup prize is unofficial, as is the $8 million he received from the “Comcast Business Top 10” for leading the regular season.