2015 Players Championship results and leaderboard: Rickie Fowler edges Sergio Garcia, Kevin Kisner in playoff

Rickie Fowler put to rest that “overrated” label when he rode a record-tying 6-under incoming nine holes in regulation on Sunday to a playoff win to steal The Players Championship title from Sergio Garcia and Kevin Kisner.

A birdie on the fourth extra hole -- the sudden-death portion after an aggregate three-hole playoff -- sealed Fowler’s first Players Championship and second PGA Tour win.

“It was just about time everything started kicking in ... I kept myself in it and finally hit the button,” Fowler, who made the turn at even-par for the day, said as he waited for mid-final-round leader Garcia and the rest of the field to finish. “The biggest [swing] was the 9-iron on 13, hitting it in there and making the putt and moving on and going from there.”

Just when it seemed a snooze of a weekend at TPC Sawgrass would sputter to an uneventful end, Fowler, Garcia, and the unheralded Kisner ignited fireworks down the stretch of The Players Championship.

And when Fowler emerged victorious from the event’s first-ever aggregate three-hole playoff among the last three guys standing -- and the eventual sudden-death duel with Kisner -- the so-called “fifth major” had earned its moniker by providing one of the most exciting finishes on the PGA Tour.

It was not quite the outcome anyone anticipated for The Players -- what with visions of would-be rivals Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth going head-to-head Sunday afternoon, and maybe a revitalized Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson making a late charge.

Instead, Spieth and Mickelson failed to make it to the weekend and Woods rode a roller-coaster all week to a 3-over finish early Sunday that proved his game remained a mystery to everyone (including, perhaps, himself). Tiger was homeward-bound long before the playoff began at 7 p.m.

McIlroy -- after showing Spieth who was boss for two days and starting Sunday just four shots off Chris Kirk’s 10-under, 54-hole lead -- quietly put up a final-round 70 to close at 8-under.

The week began with a plethora of potentially exciting story lines -- a burgeoning Rory-Jordan rivalry, Tiger bringing a “fresh” new swing tweak to his quest for a third TPC title, Fowler and Ian Poulter seeking to prove wrong their tour peers who anonymously voted them the most overrated players in golf. With a birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie, 5-under finish, Fowler pretty much silenced his critics by taking a 12-under lead into the clubhouse -- and waited, and waited.

Fowler’s incoming 5-under 31 matched the lowest final nine by a TPC champion (Davis Love III in 2003) and, for a time, nabbed the spotlight from Garcia, who rode a birdie barrage on the front nine to the midway lead.

All three leapfrogged a jam-packed leader board that had 30 players within five shots of the frontrunner when Sunday’s finale began. Kirk and his final-round playing opponent, Kisner, fell away early, though Kisner improbably made his way back into contention with three birdies on his incoming nine. Indeed, had he nailed an 11-foot putt for all the marbles on the 72nd hole, he would have cadged his first tour victory.

Long before that, Garcia took sole possession of the lead with a birdie on the par-4 sixth and made the turn at 11-under and with a two-stroke lead over Kirk, Kisner, Justin Thomas, and Ben Martin, as McIlroy lurked at 8-under. A five-and-a-half-foot knee-knocker on the 10th earned a fist pump and saved par for Sergio, who snapped his misbehaving short stick over his knee and tossed it in the trash after he needed 32 putts on Friday.

Then came an all-world jinx from NBC, which posted a graphic noting Garcia missed 14 putts within 10 feet in the first three rounds and 0 on Sunday. Until his 8-foot, 6-inch birdie effort on the par-3 13th slid by the hole. He flailed his tee shot on 14 into the mounds way right off the fairway, took his shoes off to hit his ball from the edge of a cart path, and made his second bogey of the day.

This, as Fowler tapped in for eagle on the 16th to get to 10-under and within a shot of Garcia’s lead. He then birdied 17 to take the outright lead and 18 to ice the W -- or so the golf world believed, as Sergio headed to his personal hell, the par-3 17th.

A 43-foot birdie bomb on the hole that drank two of Sergio’s golf balls in 2013 rolled toward its inevitable destination, and then there were two atop the scoreboard.

Kisner joined the fun at 12-under, and the extra-innings shootout was under way. All square after three pars on No. 16, Kisner and Fowler went one-up on Garcia with birdies to Sergio’s par on 17. When all three parred the 18th, Garcia was out as the other two went to the sudden-death portion of the proceedings. A steely nerved birdie on the par-3 17th nailed it down for the popular Fowler.

“I’d say this is a pretty big [win].” Fowler said afterward about how he would address his few remaining detractors.