Justin Thomas wins 2017 Dell Technologies Championship, plus final leaderboard

Justin Thomas is not and was never in danger of becoming some sort of Shaun Micheel one-hit wonder. Just three weeks after his first major at the PGA Championship, Thomas was back at it again, winning the second event of the FedExCup Playoffs to bolster his favored status as the PGA Tour Player of the Year. Thomas held off a loaded group of chasers that included Jordan Spieth (a friend of his, I’m told), Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm, and the underrated Marc Leishman, to win the Dell Technologies Championship.

The win is the fifth of the season for Thomas, who also threw in a round of 59 and broke a 40-year scoring record at the U.S. Open this year. He’s a mega talent and has been since his early junior years. We expected big things and it’s all sort of exploding this season, his third full one on Tour. In addition to the major and scoring records, Thomas now has a chance to add a FedExCup title to cap it off in Atlanta. He’s now No. 2 in the FEC standings and will go to that finale holding one of those top 5 slots, meaning a win there would automatically wins the whole $10 million Playoffs grand prize.

Thomas got this win largely on the back on his stupid Sunday third round, which featured the most “3s” on a scorecard in FedExCup history. Thomas had 12 threes on the card on Sunday in a 9-under round of 63. That shot him into a share of the 54-hole lead with Leishman. The streak came as the result of a hot putter. Ironically enough, the big hitting Thomas made pars on the gettable par-5s at TPC Boston and made his red numbers in other more unexpected spots, bombing in putt after putt to make his big move. Early on Monday, it appeared that club would be hot again.

The rest of the leaders challenged JT right away on Monday, most notably Spieth and Leishman. Spieth started birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie to promptly shoot past both Leishman and Thomas to take the lead. It looked like it would be a day of revenge for Spieth, who lost in that playoff last week from that almost unfair Dustin Johnson moonshot. Spieth went out in 30, and Leishman followed with the same number just one group behind. So it seemed like we’d have a battle between those two down the wire, but it was Thomas who re-gained control over the inward nine to make it relatively pressure-free on the 18th with a multi-shot cushion

Thomas made just one bogey in the final round, which was one of two for the entire week, a new record in a win at TPC Boston. He joined the lead with Spieth at 16-under by nearly holing out from the fairway at the 13th, and never really looked back.

While the leaderboard was loaded, we didn’t really get that drama at the end like last week. Leishman, after going out in 30, posted a 40 on the back nine and Spieth shot a 2-over 37 trying to get into the house. Early on, it felt like we would have a shootout over 18 holes with birdies pouring in from all three. But it was really the guy who just made no mistakes, giving almost nothing back all week to the course, that emerged while the others fell off the pace. Birdies weren’t needed on every other hole.

Thomas has been so fun to watch since his rookie year and the results are now coming and in a big way. He’s almost certainly your Player of the Year. Now we’ll see if he can take down the entire FedExCup too. After two weeks, we’re set up for a fantastic battle with Spieth and Dustin Johnson over the final two legs of the Playoffs.

The concurrent contest during the first two legs of this FedExCup has been the jostling for Presidents Cup roster position. The first nine spots on the team have been pretty solid for the last month or so, but the final auto qualifier was completely up for grabs and there was some uncertainty about the two captain’s picks. Now, it would appear we have clarity, if not finality, on all 12 spots for Steve Stricker’s team later this month.

First, the known: Kevin Chappell finished 12 spots ahead of Charley Hoffman at TPC Boston and he is officially the 10th and final auto qualifier. It comes by the narrowest of margins and went up to the final hole.

Chappell was told he was officially on the team as he made his way to the airport to unwind during the off week.

The two captain’s picks aren’t final, but seem pretty intuitive at this point. Phil Mickelson was likely going to be a captain’s pick regardless of what he did in the FedExCup. It needed to be a complete wreck for Stricker to take him out of the running — Phil has been a mainstay on all these teams, both Ryder and Presidents, since 1995. It’s an outrageous run of consistency, and his strong top 10 showing this week in Boston should just about lock up one of those two wild card selections.

The other will likely go to Hoffman, who missed that final auto spot by almost nothing and is having a career year. There’s no other veteran down the rankings like Phil or an up-and-coming talent that is a contender. It could be fun to go way outside the box but Stricker is not going to do that.

So Phil and Chuckie Hoffman should round out the roster when those picks are made on Wednesday. They would add to a roster that already looks like this:

The PGA Tour now takes the rare week off before the FedExCup Playoffs resume at the BMW Championship in Chicago. We’ll go Chicago, then the Tour Championship finale in Atlanta, followed by the Presidents Cup to round out the month in New York. So the players at the top of the rankings will take welcome breather this week. Here are your final results from Boston: