With his FedEx Cup win, the PGA Tour caps off the Summer of Rory McIlroy

ATLANTA — Late Sunday afternoon, as Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler prepared to play the final hole of the Tour Championship, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan stood on a balcony of the East Lake Golf Club clubhouse, overlooking the 18th green.

Monahan, who has had a difficult summer if you haven’t heard, had a big smile on his face.

Monahan knows that no matter which players LIV Golf takes from the PGA Tour on Monday, or in the coming days, weeks, months or years, it seems certain the rival tour will never get McIlroy and Scheffler, two of the biggest stars in the game not named Tiger Woods.

In April, Scheffler got the upper hand on McIlroy when he won his first major championship at the Masters and McIlroy finished second. On Sunday, McIlroy got even by rallying from a 6-shot deficit over the last 18 holes, the largest final-round comeback in Tour Championship history.

With starting strokes, McIlroy finished 21 under over 72 holes, 1 shot better than Scheffler and South Korea’s Sungjae Im. McIlroy is the first three-time winner of the FedEx Cup; the latest one came with an $18 million winner’s purse.

“It means an awful lot,” McIlroy said. “I believe in the game of golf. I believe in this tour in particular. I believe in the players on this tour. It’s the greatest place in the world to play golf, bar none, and I’ve played all over the world. This is an incredibly proud moment for me, but it should also be an incredibly proud moment for the PGA Tour.

“They’ve had some hard times this year, but we’re getting through it. That was a spectacle out there today, two of the best players in the world going head-to-head for the biggest prize on the PGA Tour, and I hope everyone at home enjoyed that.”

Even as Scheffler assumed the No. 1 position in the Official World Golf Ranking by winning four times in six starts, the Summer of Scottie still felt a lot like the Summer of…