It May Not Have Featured A Major Win, But Rory McIlroy’s 2019 Season Was Still Great As He Capped It Off With A Victory At The Tour Championship

Most that follow the game of golf measure a season’s success on finishes in major championships, more specifically major championship victories. When it comes to the big names in golf, a lot of people would argue that without a major win you can’t say that the player’s year was great. Hell, I fall into that same mindset most of the time, but in some cases, there are exceptions to saying a non-major winner for that year had a great season.

Rory McIlroy’s 2019 is an exception. The 30-year-old had a damn good season. In fact, it was a great year despite the fact he missed the cut at The Open and his best finish in a major was T-8 at the PGA Championship.

McIlroy teed it up just 19 times on the PGA Tour this season and recorded 14 Top 10 finishes, good enough for a 74-percent clip. Those Top 10’s included a win at The Players, a crazy dominant seven-shot win at the RBC Canadian Open, three Top 10 finishes in WGC events and of course the four-shot win at the Tour Championship to close out the year.

Now, if he would have crumbled down the stretch at the Tour Championship on Sunday this is an entirely different story, but the way he performed en route to a four-shot win puts his season into that great category.

With the new FedEx Cup format, McIlroy began the week at five-under, five shots back of leader Justin Thomas. After going 66-67-68 through the opening three rounds, he entered Sunday’s final-round tied for second with Xander Schauffele at 14-under, one shot back of playing partner Brooks Koepka.

Exactly one month ago Koepka and McIlroy teed it up in the final-round at the WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational and Koepka absolutely waxed McIlroy by six shots.

It was pretty easy to be skeptical with Rory’s chances on Sunday, but we saw the exact opposite of what we saw at the FedEx St. Jude as he bested Koepka by six this time around.

The biggest difference this Sunday, and all week really, was McIlroy’s utter dominance off the tee. Rory hit 10 of 14 fairways on Sunday and led the field in strokes gained: off the tee for the week picking up over 5.3 shots on the field. Koepka hit just five fairways and actually lost 1.3 strokes off the tee for the week, which is a very rare sight.

Besting Koepka by six with $15 million on the line to close out the year, yeah, that’s a pretty impressive way to cap off your 2019, even if he received one of the best breaks we’ll ever see courtesy of a drain.

While we all base success off of results, there’s no way we can ignore how insane McIlroy was this season from a statistical standpoint.

Yes, Rory’s 2019 was the best season from a strokes gained standpoint by anyone not named Tiger Woods in the past 15 years. Sidenote, that 2006 Tiger wasn’t a real human, 3.44 strokes gained doesn’t even seem real. Maybe that had something to do with him winning seven straight tournaments that year including The Open and PGA Championship.

McIlroy earned a whopping $22.785 million this year putting his career earnings at just under $84 million; not too bad for a 30-year-old from the small town of Hollywood, Northern Ireland.

Here’s how much money each player took home at the Tour Championship.