PGA Championship 2014: Rory McIlory wins Wanamaker Trophy at dusk

The contrast was most stark on the very first day of the tournament. As Tiger Woods flailed, cursed and yanked tee shotsoff the course, you just wanted the afternoon wave of tee times to arrive so you could watch Rory McIlroy play golf again.

McIlroy entered the tournament as the heavy favorite, having won his last two events and playing a level a golf that no one in the world could approach, even at their best. And we were anxious just to get him back out there, see him light up Louisville. Rory is now a player who anchors the tee sheet, regardless of who he’s playing with and at what time.

With the conclusion of the PGA Championship, the American roster for the Ryder Cup now has its automatic nine qualifiers. The most notable move on Sunday was Phil Mickelson’s second-place finish shooting him up the standings and into an automatic qualifying spot. Mickelson’s rise bumped Jason Dufner out of an auto-berth, while Zach Johnson did enough with a T70 finish to hang onto the 9th and final spot over Dufner.

It’s been a rough week for Dufner, who had to withdraw after just nine holes due to bulging discs in his neck. Dufner has been a stud in these American team competitions, both at the 2012 Ryder Cup and the 2013 Presidents Cup. His partnership with Zach Johnson usually results in a ball-striking show, and they’ve been a natural and successful duo. But Dufner is in poor health, and said he probably needs six to eight weeks rest before he gets any better. That would make him borderline healthy when the Ryder Cup rolls around on the final weekend of September. He would be a valuable member of the team, but based on how the neck injury has made him either ineffective or wholly unable to play over the past month, he’s probably not getting a captain’s pick.

Rory McIlroy is amazing. No, it’s not because he’s exceptionally good at golf -- that’s only part of it. He’s great not only because he can save the Wanamaker trophy from possible destruction. It’s because Rory will play 18 holes, win three straight tournaments and still chug his booze.

Ted Bishop is a middle-aged man, taking a dainty sip is fine for him. Rory is in his drinking-prime, might as well down that sucker.

It pushed the limits of Louisville daylight, but Sunday was the best major championship day of the year. The perfect leaderboard came together on the perfect firing range of a course for a manic final round at the PGA Championship. It was the best non-Tiger scenario the PGA of America and golf fans could have hoped for, and in the end, the guy assuming the role of Tiger for the next generation clinched a one-shot win over a loaded superstar group of chasers.

Rory McIlroy started the day with a 54-hole lead, but found himself down three shots by the time he got to the back nine. Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler did the charging from one group ahead, throwing darts into the pins on on a soft Valhalla course and setting the pace.

Rory McIlroy showed a steely nerve to close out the PGA Tour at Valhalla in darkness and STILL had the wherewithal to show quick-thinking and amazing hands to save the Wanamaker trophy when it was almost dropped on the ground.

Seriously dude, you can do no wrong today.

Rory McIlroy cemented his status as the top player in the world on Sunday when he held off an impressive list of contenders to win the 2014 PGA Championship, the second of his career. McIlroy has now won four major championships, including back-to-back major wins. The victory was his third professional win in a row.

McIlroy, in claiming his second grand slam trophy of the season, finished at 16-under to hold off an all-star field led by Phil Mickelson, who finished second at 15-under in the final major of the men’s season. McIlroy became the third-youngest player to win four majors -- ahead of Woods and between Jack Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros.

Rory McIlroy won the PGA Tour Championship at Valhalla Golf Club, and he needed to do it in near-darkness. The round ran long because of a weather delay, forcing players to finish out the round in astoundingly low light.

This is a shot showing just how dark it was at Valhalla when Rory won.

Rory McIlroy is in the midst of one of the best stretches of golf you’ll ever see with his latest victory coming at the PGA Championship. That makes two majors in a row and three straight wins. The victory adds to his growing resume of accomplishments and comes with another very large prize. By winning at Valhalla, McIlroy claimed the $1.8 million first-place purse.

He has now won at least $1.5 million in each of his last three events. McIlroy banked $1,665,788 for winning the Open Championship and added another $1.53 million payout with his win last week at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. His take on Sunday was the biggest yet and gives him $4,995,788 in on-course winnings in the last four weeks. Winning three straight events is hard enough on the PGA Tour, but beating major-caliber fields three times in less than a month is on an entirely different level.

It’s so dark at Valhalla that you can’t really see where the golf ball is going at this point. But there’s just one hole left to play so we’re seeing something unprecedented. The last two groups of Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler followed by Rory McIlroy and Bernd Wiesberger are basically playing the 18th as a foursome. McIlroy, shortly after making a birdie to go up two on the 17th green, walked up on the 18th tee and asked if he could hit his drive right as Rickie and Phil walked off the tee box. He asked for the thumbs up and then ripped one as the twosome ahead waited off to the side.

He’s been putting the pressure on the last three holes, but Rory officially joins the battle with Rickie and Phil at 15-under. This is about as emphatic a fist pump as we’ve seen from McIlroy, who’s in the first close battle on Sunday at a major in his career.

This was the best moment of the major championship season so far. With Rory McIlroy in the fairway, Phil Mickelson pours in a 30-footer to save an incredible par. McIlroy assumed it was a birdie and he had just gone down two.

The battle between McIlroy, Mickelson, and Fowler, all bunched up within a hole of each other, is incredible right now.

All the leaders are now on the back nine at Valhalla, and the pace just keeps getting more and more manic at the PGA Championship. After a five-way tie during the early portion of the madness, the main contenders on the back nine now appear to be Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, and Henrik Stenson. There could be no better set of non-Tiger circumstances for the PGA of America.

The height of the four-man battle so far came during a 5 minute sequence at the 10th and 11th holes. It started with Rickie Fowler, who got up on the green in three but had a lengthy putt to post a red number on a hole where birdies are easily available. Fowler’s putter has been perfect all day, and this one he put dead center to take sole possession of the lead at 15-under.

There have been plugged lines at Valhalla this week due to all the rain. Phil Mickelson almost had a really plugged line when a person walking by nearly stepped on his ball. Fortunately Mickelson was there to play defense.

Via Michael Shamburger of thebiglead.

No one, absolutely no one, reacts to burning the edge of the cup on a missed eagle putt better than Phil Mickelson. The 5-time major winner is making a run at another PGA on Sunday, and this eagle putt at No. 7 would have put him right back on the lead with playing partner Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson. It was tracking ... tracking ... tracking and then just slid by on the high side. Phil’s incredulity was about what you’d expect (via EyeOnGolf)

This came just about 24 hours after Mickelson hit an eagle putt on the 18th that looked in the entire way. And a photographer was there to capture every frame of his reaction, which could be interpreted in a variety of NSFW ways with no context.

I wrote that Saturday’s back nine stretch at Valhalla was the best stretch of major championship golf this year. We were set up perfectly for more on Sunday, and we’ve already matched it early on the front nine. After Phil Mickelson rolled in two birdies and jumped up in to a share of the lead with Rory McIlroy, Fowler the decided to pass everyone up with three straight red numbers.

The third birdie, coming on a chip in from the side of the green at No. 5, broke a five-way tie at the top and put him in sole possession of the lead. It also earned him a fist bump from his competitor and playing partner, Mickelson.

The PGA Championship might be the fourth major for some, but it’s got the richest purse in the game. Ted Bishop has been an aggressive and outside-the-box leader at the PGA of America and one of his moves at the end of last year was announcing the PGA’s move to a $10 million purse.

That’s a $2 million increase from last year at Oak Hill, and set the pace for all the other majors to bump their purses from last year’s $8 million total. It was definitely a move that upset the synergy of having all four majors pay out the same amount, and the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open all increased their purses this year to at least $9 million, but none matched the $10 million commitment by the PGA last year.

The late groups are finally on the course at Valhalla after a delayed start and if early indications hold, scores could go very low. The rain-soaked course if soft, leading to favorable scoring conditions. Phil Mickelson took advantage early on with two birdies in his first three holes. He now trails leader Rory McIlroy by just a shot.

Mickelson is off to a terrific start. Mickelson found the center of the fairway on his opening tee shot and followed it up with a solid approach to the green. Mickelson has putted well thus far and he’ll need that to continue if he’s going to make a run. He couldn’t have started any better with the flatstick, drilling a 30-foot putt on No. 1 for an opening birdie. He moved into a tie for second place on No. 3 when he hit a pure iron into the par-3 then made the 10-foot putt for birdie. The early red numbers have him at 12-under.

Rory McIlroy, unlike his second-round playing partner at this week’s PGA Championship, was completely unfazed by a few raindrops that pushed back his regularly scheduled afternoon tee time in Sunday’s final round of the PGA Championship.

In fact, with the world No. 1 on the brink of winning his fourth major championship and going back-to-back-to-back in his last three tournaments, McIlroy would bunk down at Valhalla for as long as it took to get the finale in the books.

Jason Day is in the thick of things in Sunday’s final round at the PGA Championship but a nagging wrist injury was forcing him to make changes in his grip just a few hours before he headed out in the third-to-last group at Valhalla.

Day, who will start the finale at 10-under and just three shots back of 54-hole leader Rory McIlroy, has had a frustrating season, to say the least. A thumb injury forced him to the DL for a lengthy stay early on, vertigo caused him to withdraw from Firestone last week, and now the wrist stinger that flared up at the British Open.

There’s a huge rain delay at the PGA Championship, so the players are just chillin’, killing time. Rory McIlroy is in first place, and he’s taking selfies and using his iPhone. Cameras showed him using his iPhone -- specifically, opening it -- and if you have an iPhone, you know that’s a problem.

It shows Rory entering his passcode to open the phone, and everybody in the world saw it:

This is a pretty great way to take advantage of a rain delay: seek out the No. 1 player in the world and the current PGA leader for a selfie.

Rory has had a good week creating some awww moments. This photo from Thursday in Louisville was picked up by media outlets over the world.

It’s pouring again at Valhalla, which has taken on heavy rains for three straight days now. The water is dumping faster and harder than it has all week, however, and the PGA of America had to suspend play of the final round of the PGA Championship just before 1 p.m. ET

UPDATE: The delay is going to run almost two hours, with the resumption scheduled for 2:40 p.m. The PGA is going to shave down the interval between each remaining tee time to try and get the final pairing on the course at 4:18 p.m. ET. Sunset in Lousiville is 8:42 p.m. on Sunday, so there might be juuuust enough time to finish before darkness. They’ll need clear conditions in the evening and no playoff going to extra holes.

The golf world’s thoughts and prayers are with Ian Poulter as he bravely soldiers on, even going on an early final-round tear at the PGA Championship, despite the turbulence of having to deal with the woes and anguish of the rich and famous.

Poulter, the multi-millionaire hero of the 2012 European Ryder Cup who tweets about his stable of expensive sports cars, deluxe threads, and other aspects of the cushy 1% life he leads, sparked a Twitter storm earlier this week by whining about an airline bumping his kids’ nanny from business class on their flight back to England.

This is one of the all-time bad breaks for Thorbjorn Olesen. The Dane didn’t just hit the flagstick at the par-3 8th, which happens often and is always unlucky, but he slammed it right into the cup. The ball ricocheted off the flagstick, popped out and rocketed off the green.

This was not the top of the flagstick, or ball landing on the green and then hitting the pin off the bounce. Olesen literally put it in the hole on the fly, the perfect number. And all he got out of it was a ball 72 feet away off the front edge of the green.

Phil Mickelson could have slept in on Sunday, thanks to his third-round 4-under 67 at Valhalla lifting him to 10-under and earning the 44-year-old winner of five major titles a late-afternoon tee time.

But the guy who’s old enough to be the father of his playing partner in the penultimate pairing in today’s finale to the PGA Championship was up early and on the range with swing coach Butch Harmon, hoping to find that little something extra he’ll need to thwart 54-hole leader Rory McIlroy’s chances for a fourth major championship.