2015 Deutsche Bank Championship results: Rickie Fowler gets 3rd win of a career summer

The FedExCup is off to an appropriate start following this transitional summer when so many ascendant talents started winning weekly on the PGA Tour. After Jason Day took the first leg of the postseason in New Jersey last week, Rickie Fowler chased down Henrik Stenson on the back nine Monday in Boston to win the Deutsche Bank Championship.

That lengthy winless streak after his first career title at the 2012 Wells Fargo seems like ages ago. It dogged Fowler for the past three years and the narrative that all the hype and endorsement money were not commensurate with his ability became the first talking point every time Fowler came up. Now he’s got a his third win of the year and second on the PGA Tour.

They haven’t come at trash events either, but against some of the deepest and most competitive fields at The Players, Scottish Open, and now a FedExCup Playoffs event. We knew he tended to play his best at the biggest events following last year, when he became the third player in history (joining Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus) to place in the top five at all four majors in a single year. This season, he’s punching it through in these final rounds and that major seems to be coming sooner rather than later.

As the final pairing hit the back nine, it appeared that Stenson would cruise to his second Deutsche Bank Championship in the last three years. The Iceman was pounding that reliable 3-wood and not giving Fowler, or any other chaser, much of a window. The lead grew to three shots at one point on the back nine but then it came undone while his playing partner refused to make a mistake. Fowler poured in this birdie bomb from almost 40 feet at the 14th hole.

That pulled Rickie to within a shot. Two holes later, he would have the lead thanks to a gust of wind knocking Stenson’s ball down and back into the water at the par-3 16th. Stenson said he tried to muscle a 7-iron up and on at the 187-yard hole, but it hit the bounced off the rocks lining the front of the green and back into the drink. The result was a double bogey. The swing at that hole finally knocked the Swede from the top of the leaderboard as Fowler completed a 2-under 35 on the back nine to sneak away with his first FedExCup event win.

This was not that absurd charge in the final hour of The Players, but it’s definitely a nice bookend to the season for Fowler. He opened the round with maybe his worst drive of the year, a snap hook down the left side. He finished with a 341-yard bomb at the 18th that made Stenson work for any chance to pull even at the last green. Rickie is obviously a new player this year and he will now move into the top five in the official world golf rankings. He’ll also join the McIlroy-Spieth-Day party for these last two events and the push for that $10 million playoff bonus money. Following Rory’s dominance last year, Spieth’s 2015 season, and now Day’s run at the world No. 1 ranking, the post-Tiger golf world is on fire right now.

Here are your final results from TPC Boston. After a break week, the FedExCup will return in Chicago for the BMW Championship.