Scheffler back in the winner's circle at St Jude as McIlroy admits he feels lost

Scottie Scheffler won the FedEx St Jude Championship at 17 under par on Sunday, his first victory since January, while Rory McIlroy finished 66th — 25 shots behind — and said he felt lost with his golf swing.

Scheffler's win at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee, ended a drought that stretched back to The American Express, the season-opening event he won to launch his 2026 PGA Tour campaign. He set the tone on Friday with a second-round 61, tying the course record at TPC Southwind, and carried a two-shot lead through 54 holes. Sam Burns finished second, two shots back.

The final round was meant to be a Sunday coronation for Scheffler. It was anything but routine for McIlroy.

McIlroy arrived in Memphis having not played competitively since the Open Championship in July. He never found his range. Across four rounds he failed to card a single under-par score, finishing at eight over for the tournament — 66th out of 68 players in the field.

The numbers tell the story of a ball-striker bereft of his usual precision. McIlroy ranked 62nd of 68 in strokes gained from tee to green — a metric that measures how a player performs on full shots compared to the field average. For a man who has built his career on overpowering golf courses from the tee, that is close to rock bottom.

Sunday's final round captured the whole week in microcosm. McIlroy opened with a six on the par-four first hole — a double bogey before he had settled into his stride. He rallied with four birdies in a seven-hole stretch on the back nine, a flicker of the class that has won him four majors. Then he finished with successive bogeys, the momentum gone as quickly as it arrived.

Afterward, McIlroy was candid. "Almost felt like the more the week went on, the more I felt lost with the golf swing a little bit," he said, according to the PGA Tour.

This is not the first time McIlroy has used that word. He said the same thing after missing the cut at the 2022 Valero Texas Open, a stretch of poor form he later turned around by winning the CJ Cup and reclaiming the world number one ranking. Whether this dip follows the same arc remains an open question.

Despite the Memphis meltdown, McIlroy sits 13th in the season-long FedEx Cup standings — the points race that determines the PGA Tour's overall champion each year. That ranking keeps him alive in the playoffs, but the gap between where he is and where he expects to be has rarely looked wider.

For Scheffler, the opposite. A player who spent the early months of 2026 without a win since January now has a course-record 61 and a trophy to show for his week in Memphis. The FedEx Cup playoffs are just beginning, and the world's top-ranked player has found his gear at the right time.

For McIlroy, the search continues.