Tour Championship

ATLANTA - He's just too good, plain and simple. After dominating golf for the last decade, Tiger Woods yesterday began the domination of a new era in the game, the era of the FedEx Cup. Touring East Lake Golf Club with a 4-under 66, Woods posted a four-day total of 257 (23 under), a mark that earned him his second Tour Championship by 8 shots. His 72-hole total was the lowest in his career, matching the third-lowest total in PGA Tour history. He broke the tournament record by 6 strokes.

Annoyed by his two previous failures at East Lake, Vijay Singh left nothing to chance in the Tour Championship in Atlanta. After working overtime on a swing he could trust, and rehearsing a 3-iron shot to the 18th in case it came down to the final hole, Singh finally got his revenge on East Lake by closing with a 3-under 67 to win with a total of 12-under 268. "The last two times I came over here, I thought I was going to win it," Singh said...

Bart Bryant raised his arms as his putt headed for the center of the cup yesterday, giving him another eagle on the 15th hole at the Tour Championship in Atlanta. But this celebration was different. The short eagle putt in the first round carried him to the course record at East Lake. This one allowed him to stop his slide, and kept him atop the leaderboard with defending champion Retief Goosen. "It was more important than two shots," Bryant said. Bryant saw a five-shot lead disappear in six holes as he struggled in the bunkers, but recovered with a 30-foot eagle putt for a 2-under 68 that left him tied with Goosen after two rounds.

Once again, Phil Mickelson has tamed Tiger Woods. Nine months ago, in his boyhood hometown of San Diego, Mickelson mounted a late-round rally to win the Buick Invitational and halt Woods' incredible winning streak at six. Yesterday, while all eyes were on coleaders Woods and Vijay Singh, Mickelson came from 1 shot behind to win by 2 over Woods in the prestigious Tour Championship. With a final round of 66, he finished at 13 under par on the East Lake Golf Club course. "I didn't expect him to win," joked Mickelson, acknowledging that perhaps he alone hadn't figured that Woods was a lock to win his 10th tournament of the year.

This week, when the top 30 money winners on the PGA Tour show up in Atlanta for the Tour Championship, most of the usual suspects will be on hand. Tiger Woods, your perennial top dog (winner of $6.7 million in only 17 events), of course, will be the favorite. There will also be marquee players such as Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia and Davis Love III vying for the $900,000 winner's cut of the $5 million purse. No doubt, the big-name guys will all leave East Lake Golf Club at the end of the week with another fat check and a smile.

Too far behind to do anything about the FedEx Cup, Camilo Villegas put together a stirring rally yesterday that was good enough to win the Tour Championship in a playoff over Sergio Garcia for his second straight victory. Villegas overcame a five-shot deficit by making six birdies over his last 11 holes for a 4-under 66, then beat Garcia with a par on the 233-yard 18th hole used in the playoff. The 26-year-old Colombian, who had gone 85 starts on the PGA Tour without winning, picked up his second in a row with a finish that brought the gallery to life on a sunny afternoon at East Lake in Atlanta.

Charles Howell III realized par would be an acceptable score at windy East Lake and he did one better, posting a 69 yesterday for a one-stroke lead at the Tour Championship in Atlanta. Howell finished at 5-under-par 135 heading into the weekend, one stroke ahead of David Toms, Steve Lowery, Len Mattiace and Vijay Singh. Despite making two bogeys with a wedge in his hand from the fairway, Howell finished with eight straight pars. "If I make two pars there, I'm 7-under, which looks a little bit different than 5-under," Howell said.

Ten minutes after he watched his par putt spin out of the hole to end an aggravating day, Tiger Woods changed into shorts and a sleeveless shirt, then strapped on his fingerless gloves to go lift weights. "It might be a little heavier this time," Woods said of his workout. If anything, he needed to work off some steam yesterday. In a pressure-packed finale of the PGA Tour season, Woods had no trouble distancing himself from chief rival Vijay Singh in the first round of the Tour Championship in Houston.

As a lone bagpipe wailed an old Scottish song, "Going Home," in the early morning mist yesterday, many of Payne Stewart's teary-eyed friends said goodbye. It was somber yet stirring and fitting farewell for the man who years ago adopted knickers and a cap as his sartorial statement on the golf course. Had Stewart, ever the joker, been here in person rather than in spirit, he would have no doubt winked and grinned at the sight of his friends and golfing rivals gathered, along with a few hundred fans and PGA Tour officials, at the first tee of Champions Golf Club minutes before the start of the Tour Championship.

ADAM SCOTT IS playing well enough to win the Tour Championship. If he gets some help, he could win a lot more. Scott birdied his last two holes yesterday for a 5-under 65 to emerge from a packed leaderboard and take a one-shot lead over K.J. Choi going into the weekend at East Lake in Atlanta. Scott won the Tour Championship in 2006, the last year when he only had to keep track of the leaderboard. He is No. 19 in the FedEx Cup, making him a longshot to capture the $10 million bonus.

For Jim Furyk, the last six weeks have been strange and unusual. If you throw out his injury-plagued 2004 season, Furyk has missed a total of 18 cuts from 2003 through 2010. That's just 10.6 percent of the 170 tournaments in which he has competed during that time, or an average of 2.57 per season. But the West Chester-born Furyk, the reigning PGA Tour player of the year, hasn't been anywhere near that pace recently. Entering this week's AT&T National at Aronimink, Furyk has three straight missed cuts, and four in his last five tournaments, astounding numbers for a man who has built a record of consistency over the years.

FDS Winter Tour TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP At Five Ponds; par 71. Rich Steinmetz, Spring Ford. . . 70 (Steinmetz's 3d title in 4 years) Dave Roberts, Cedarbrook. . . 72 John Shapcott, Meadowlands. . . 72 Bill Walker, Bala. . . 72 Jamie Shaffer, Links. . . 73 Mickey Sokalski, Philmont. . . 73 John Emmel, Links. . . 73 P.J. Solley, Five Ponds. . . 74 Dan Malley, Paxon Hollow. . . 74 Gary Hardin, Northampton. . . 74 Neil Gillies, Mountain Branch.

PARAMUS, N.J. - In his first tournament since his divorce, Tiger Woods finally looked like the No. 1 player in the world at the Barclays, opening Thursday with a 6-under 65, his lowest score of the year. Woods shared the lead with Vaughn Taylor. It was Woods' first time leading after any round on the PGA Tour since the Tour Championship in September. Woods and Taylor had a one-shot lead over Adam Scott, Brian Gay, and Ryan Palmer. The last time Woods was atop the leader board after any round of any tournament was when he won the Australian Masters on Nov. 15, less than two weeks before he crashed his vehicle outside his home and sparked a chain of events that ended his marriage.

The second step in Tiger Woods' post-scandal career turned out to be a short one. Maybe even a step backward. Woods missed the cut for just the sixth time in his professional career, stumbling to a 7-over-par 79 on Friday in the Quail Hollow Championship that set a handful of personal worsts. Coupled with Thursday's 74, Woods' two-day total of 9-over 153 was his highest as a pro - 1 more than when he missed the cut in the 2006 U.S. Open. That was his first tournament back after his father's death.

Careers are mostly about taking steps. West Chester's Sean O'Hair is about to take the next one in his progression as one of the best under-30 players on the PGA Tour. The 2005 Rookie of the Year is on the 12-man American team that will take on the rest of the World (minus Europe) in the biennial Presidents Cup matches starting tomorrow at Harding Park, a municipal course in San Francisco. He's the only member of the U.S. squad who has never played in one of these. He was in position to get to his first Ryder Cup a year ago but didn't.

Age is starting to creep up on Vijay Singh, who turns 46 in February and spent the last 3 months taking the longest break of his life to let nagging injuries heal. But against a world-class field yesterday at the Chevron World Challenge in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Singh looked as good as new. With three straight birdies early on the back nine to get into contention and a 10-foot birdie putt on the final hole, Singh closed with a 5-under 67 for a one-shot victory over Steve Stricker to finish off the most lucrative season of his career.

Maria Sharapova expects to be back on the tennis tour at the start of 2009 and defend her Australian Open title after being sidelined since July with an injured right shoulder. Sharapova's agent, Max Eisenbud, told the Associated Press yesterday that she is "on track" to return to action at the Jan. 7-10 exhibition in Hong Kong. Sharapova has not played competitively since pulling out of a tournament in Montreal in late July with a torn rotator cuff tendon. Olympics Australian swimmer Nick D'Arcy has pleaded guilty to assaulting former Commonwealth Games gold medalist Simon Cowley in a bar on March 30, a punch that cost him a place at the Beijing Olympics and could lead to a jail sentence.

Too far behind to do anything about the FedEx Cup, Camilo Villegas put together a stirring rally yesterday that was good enough to win the Tour Championship in a playoff over Sergio Garcia for his second straight victory. Villegas overcame a five-shot deficit by making six birdies over his last 11 holes for a 4-under 66, then beat Garcia with a par on the 233-yard 18th hole used in the playoff. The 26-year-old Colombian, who had gone 85 starts on the PGA Tour without winning, picked up his second in a row with a finish that brought the gallery to life on a sunny afternoon at East Lake in Atlanta.

U.S. Walker Cup captain Buddy Marucci won the USGA Senior Amateur, beating George Zahringer, 2-up, in Fort Worth, Texas. Marucci, 56, who lives in Villanova, won for the first time in 51 starts in USGA events. He lost to Tiger Woods in the 1995 U.S. Amateur final. Marucci, the captain of the victorious 2007 Walker Cup team in Northern Ireland, will be unable to defend his title next year in Chicago. He will instead be at Merion as the returning captain of the 2009 Walker Cup squad.