Furyk lands cash bonanza

Jim Furyk headed to the Ryder Cup tonight almost £7.2m (€8.5m) richer after landing golf’s biggest jackpot in Atlanta.

The 40-year-old American won the Tour Championship by a single shot from England’s Luke Donald – also bound for Celtic Manor – and with it added the £6.3m (€7.4m) FedEx Cup play-off bonus to complete a remarkable turnaround from four weeks ago.

Furyk began the end-of-season series by being disqualified from the first of the four events for oversleeping.

But, forced to play catch-up once he woke up, the former US Open champion did just that – with more than a little help from all those above him in the points race, including Donald and Paul Casey.

Starting the final week 11th on the points table Furyk’s closing 70 – a lot of it played in pouring rain – gave him an eight under par total of 272.

Donald, for whom a win would have given him both winning cheques, looked out of it when he bogeyed the 16th and came up short of the 17th green, but he dramatically chipped in from over 90 feet.

However, Furyk, three clear with three to play, then bogeyed the same two holes and after Donald, also second at the Deutsche Bank Championship three weeks ago, parred the difficult par three last Furyk had to do the same to triumph.

Pushing his tee shot into sand increased the tension, but he splashed out of the wet sand magnificently to within three feet and holed.

Donald’s consolation was an overall play-off bonus of over £1.2m (€1.4m) for third place and he said: “Obviously I have a little bit of disappointment – I had a good chance and unfortunately I came up one shot short.

“I will try to crack that winner’s circle soon (his last title in American was over 4 1/2 years ago) and hopefully I can take some of this good golf to the Ryder Cup.”

Paul Casey, fifth in the standings when he began the tournament, also stood on the last tee with a chance of the bonus bonanza.

Needing solo second, he required an improbable birdie to keep the dream alive, though, and a par was the best he could do after finding the greenside bunker.

It meant Casey finished second and fourth in the last two play-off events, good enough to keep the argument raging about whether he deserved a Ryder Cup wild card.

“I had no idea – ignorance is bliss I think,” said Casey when asked if he knew where he stood right at the death.

“The last time I looked at the leaderboard was after the 15th. I figured I needed to do something and it wasn’t to be.”

He missed a seven-foot par putt on the 17th after firing his approach way right.

For a while it looked as though Furyk’s fellow American Nick Watney – not a member of the Ryder Cup – was going to pull off a simply startling victory.

Seven over par and 15 strokes off the lead after seven holes of his third round, Watney played the next 20 holes in a staggering 14 under and was only one behind.

That included playing the back nine in 28 and then the front nine in 30, but then came a lightning delay of 110 minutes and it appeared to stop the 29-year-old’s momentum.

He bogeyed the 16th and 17th and dropped alongside Casey.