Weekly PGA Recap: Horschel Takes Care of Business

The PGA Tour's season-long race to the Tour Championship has now been completed, but not before one final pit stop, courtesy of Billy Horschel. With a redemptive victory all but secured, having landed on the 72nd green with a two-stroke lead on Sunday, Horschel sprinted up the fairway in bright red pants and disappeared ... into a port-a-potty (pro athletes, they're just like us!).

Horschel promptly returned for his final two putts, winning the third leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, the BMW Championship, a week after his disastrous ending to the second leg, the Deutsche Bank Championship. Now, having taken care of business -- in more ways than one -- Horschel controls his own fate heading into next week's season-ending Tour Championship.

The top five in the FedEx Cup point standings can win the playoffs' $10 million first prize by winning at East Lake; anyone else would need some help. Horschel is now in second place, behind last week's winner, Chris Kirk, and followed by Sunday's runner-up, Bubba Watson; regular-season points leader Rory McIlroy; and Hunter Mahan, who won the playoff-opening Barclays.

Horschel, who until last week had had only two top-10s all season, was in prime position to tie or even overtake Kirk at the Deutsche Bank, only to hideously chunk his final-hole approach into a hazard. Obviously, it didn't linger with him.

And now he's soaring heading into next week's denouement, in more ways than one: "If I were a betting man, I'd put some money on me," Horschel told reporters at Cherry Hill Country Club, in the normally reserved PGA Tour's biggest display of swagger since Patrick Reed declared himself a top-5 player (and we see how well that worked out for Reed).

Who knows? With a runner-up and a win in the last two weeks, Horschel is the hottest golfer going, by far the best putter at the BMW (2.975 strokes gained-putting). It came a bit late for him to be a consideration for a Ryder's Cup captain's pick, not that Tom Watson based his choices on recent play.

MONDAY BACKSWING

Bubba Watson

With no one on the U.S. team having truly thrived as the Ryder Cup draws near, now three weeks away, Watson's runner-up position was certainly good news for Watson. Of course, the high altitude outside Denver allowed Watson to launch his drives in a way he won't be able to at Gleneagles in Scotland. He finished only 42nd in putting in the 69-man field, and that won't cut it against the Europeans.

Morgan Hoffmann

If there was a big winner other than Horschel, it was Hoffmann, who shot a surreal 62-63 on the weekend to finish solo third and soar from 68th in the point standings to 21st, one of two golfers outside the top 30 entering the week to qualify for the Tour Championship. Hoffmann started the playoffs 124th out of 125 golfers, and did well enough each week to keep playing. As one of the 30 qualifiers, he gets into the Masters, U.S. Open and Open Championship next year. Quite the bonanza for the second-year pro. (The next-biggest winner besides Horschel and Hoffmann might've been me, who picked up Hoffmann in the RotoWire League right before the BMW, the last of the 69 golfers in the field not on a roster.)

Ryan Palmer

Palmer was the other golfer besides Hoffmann to get inside the top 30, moving from 37th to 23rd with a T4 finish. That's a consolation for the veteran, who had the lead or part of it for a big chunk of the weekend, but doubled No. 13 on Sunday as part of a back-nine 40 that killed his chances.

Sergio Garcia

Brrrrrr. There was an early snowman this year in Denver. It came just past 4:30 Mountain Time on Sunday, Sept. 7, when Garcia tripled the 17th for an 8. At that point, the Spaniard had the last, best chance to catch Horschel, but it all came apart on the penultimate hole. As crushing as that was, it was Garcia's ninth top 10 in 15 PGA starts. Garcia finished T9 last year at the Tour Championship.

Rory McIlroy

McIlroy wound up tied for eighth, six shots behind Horschel - and that, astoundingly, was with two four-putts. The Ulsterman four-jacked the 12th hole Saturday, then, after getting himself back into semi-contention, did it again on the same hole Sunday, somehow still shooting 66. It was the latest example of mental lapses for McIlroy, who a couple weeks ago acknowledged that his late-summer surge has left him a bit tired. He didn't qualify for East Lake last year and was T10 in 2012.

Bill Haas

Haas finished tied for 16th at Cherry Hill, his worst showing in the playoffs, following a T15 at The Barclays and a T9 at the Deutsche Bank. And that came after being runner-up at the Wyndham. It didn't seem that Haas got serious consideration from Watson as a captain's pick, but he's surely playing better than Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson and, outside of one week, Mahan, too. Haas, of course, was the 2011 FedEx Cup champion, hitting that memorable shot out of the water on 17 on Sunday.

Henrik Stenson

The defense for last year's FEC champion has ended. Stenson wound up T23 on Sunday, leaving him 52nd in the point standings. The Swede had some fine moments - T3 at the PGA Championship, T4 at the U.S. Open and T5 at Bayhill - but not enough of them. Nest stop for Stenson: Gleneagles.

Stuart Appleby

Appleby just missed out on the Tour Championship, dropping from 26th to 31st in the standings with a T46 finish. That left him a mere 14 points behind Dustin Johnson. Johnson, of course, will not play East Lake, with his season ending prematurely, either by suspension or personal decision, depending on your viewpoint. The Tour does not fill out the field to 30, so only 29 will tee it up. Appleby was fortunate to even be in position to get close, having started the playoffs in 98th place and riding a T2 in the Barclays almost all the way to the final event of the season.

Hunter Mahan

Mahan is also a beneficiary of the heavily weighted playoff point system. Amid a down year, he entered The Barclays in 62nd position, then won the tournament to vault to No. 1. At the BMW, he finished tied for 59th, but that dropped him only from third to fifth in the standings. Not only are the FEC playoff points wildly skewed, they are wildly skewed for doing well, without much penalty for poor play. That's why Appleby was able to almost sneak in after missing the cut in Boston and then the T46 in Denver.

Webb Simpson

Fresh off being selected to the Ryder Cup team, Simpson meandered to a 53rd-place check at Cherry Hill. He has not played his best golf since the early part of 2014, but that was enough to get him into the top 30, so he'll have one more event to try to get sharp for the Cup.

Keegan Bradley

Like Simpson, Bradley also began the week with news of his impending trip to Gleneagles. But that's where the good news ended. Bradley disqualified himself from the BMW on Saturday, even though he was absolved from any wrongdoing relating to a first-round drop. That cost him a shot at the Tour Championship, falling from 28th to 33rd, having accrued zero points on the week.