As Yogi Berra famously said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
Such was the case at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis.
With three holes left, it appeared Tommy Fleetwood was finally going to get his first PGA Tour win. Instead, an ill-timed bogey ended Fleetwood’s day in heartbreak once again, and it was his fellow Englishman, good friend and Sunday playing partner, Justin Rose, who went on a torrid pace after being down three with five holes to play to fall into a playoff with J.J. Spaun.
And Rose, 45, won it grandly, proving that golf is a game of inches—and age is just a number.
“Yeah, that was an amazing last 90 minutes,” Rose said on the 18th green after claiming the win.
On the first playoff hole, Spaun sliced hit his tee shot on TPC Southwind’s 448-yard par-4 18th. Then, Rose’s nearly splashed his drive, but the ball stayed dry by a foot. With the ball above his feet, barely able to stand without his feet in the water, he placed his shot on the green and made par after Spaun two-putted. It nearly ended there, though, with both of their birdie attempts lipping out.
So back to the 18th tee box they went. Spaun made a long-range birdie putt, similar to the one he holed to win the U.S. Open, and also from about the same distance he missed on the 72nd and first playoff holes at in Memphis. But Rose, too, dropped his mid-range stroke for birdie into the cup.
The third time would be a charm. With a new hole location, Rose made birdie from around 10 feet, and Spaun missed his 7-footer.
Over five hours after first teeing off, he was the champion at last.
CLUTCH.@JustinRose99 birdies the third playoff hole to win the first playoff event @FedExChamp. pic.twitter.com/LCxB3kWL4U
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 10, 2025
“That’s why I practice,” he said. “That’s why I play. I’ve been saying for some time now, obviously, Augusta, when I bring my best, I know I’m good enough to play and to compete, and to now win against the best players in the world. Very gratifying day for me and a lot of hard work coming to fruition.”
Rose, who fell to Rory McIlroy in a playoff at the Masters this year, started the final round one stroke off Fleetwood’s 54-hole lead. However, Rose began to fade with a water ball on No. 9 and another bogey on No. 12.
Then, trailing Fleetwood, Spaun and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, the 2013 U.S. Open champion flipped a switch.
Amid a stretch of four straight birdies, Rose made a 15-footer on the par-3 14th, hit his approach to 8 feet on No. 15, escaped bunker trouble on the par-5 16th and holed a 22-footer on No. 17 to take the lead.
Simultaneously, Fleetwood, 34, was collapsing. He had four consecutive one-putts from Nos. 12-15. But followed that by misjudging a chip off the green on No. 16, hitting it 37 feet past the hole en route to a par. On the next hole, he missed a 7-foot par putt and needed a birdie on the last to re-tie the lead.
Fleetwood, who gut-wrenchingly lost the Travelers Championship in June with a bogey on the final hole, now has 43 top 10s on Tour with zero wins, the most of all time. Second on that list is Brett Quigley with 34.
After the latest disappointment, though, he was still holding his head up high.
“I’m obviously going to be disappointed,” Fleetwood said after a final-round 69. “I think—I said last time, there’s a lot of positives to take, as much as I don’t really—I won’t feel like that right now. I’m just going to look at what I feel like I could have done and how close it was. You know, we move on.”
Fleetwood finished tied for third with Scheffler, who was playing Sunday without his regular caddie, Ted Scott. The four-time major champion was atop the leaderboard all afternoon, but his victory hopes soured on No. 15. The 29-year-old pulled his tee shot and then had to hit out from under one set of trees and over another on a daring approach. It soared 37 yards long, leading to a bogey. It was still Scheffler’s 11th consecutive top-eight finish.
“I felt like I did some good things out there,” said Scheffler, who lost 1.3 strokes on the greens Sunday. “I felt like I hit a lot of good putts. Just hit a lot of lips. I did enough to have a really good round. Just putts weren’t falling today for some reason.”
Spaun, meanwhile, was challenging all afternoon and birdied Nos. 16 and 17 to get to the top of the pack at 16 under. His 30-foot putt for the win in regulation fell 2 feet from the cup, leading to the playoff, and ultimately, Rose’s win after another missed putt from Spaun.
“Sucks to miss a seven-footer,” said Spaun, who shot a final-round 65, “but tricky read and pulled it a little bit. But yeah, I hung in there the best I could, and [Rose] beat me to the hole first. Just wasn’t meant to be.”
Rose is now the Tour’s oldest winner this season. And with the FedEx St. Jude being the first of three FedExCup playoff events, he will move from 25th to fourth in the season-long standings, likely securing a spot in the Tour Championship.
The 12-time Tour winner and former world No. 1 has come a long way from a few years ago. Despite winning the 2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Rose hasn’t made the Tour championship since 2019, a year removed from winning the season-long FedExCup title.
That’s what makes golf so gripping. There’s seemingly always light at the end of the tunnel. And sometimes, a player finds it, like Rose has.
“I’m moving well, the body is feeling good, I’m training well,” Rose said. “I feel like there could be a good run of golf still. I can’t let the age kind of become too much of the story.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Justin Rose Tops J.J. Spaun in FedEx St. Jude Playoff; Tommy Fleetwood Stumbles.
