Rory McIlroy will return to East Lake Golf Club on Tuesday with two putters in his bag and momentum on his side after a solo fourth place finish at the BMW Championship.
"I'm going to go home for a couple of nights and come back up to Atlanta Tuesday, work on my game a little bit for a day and a half, and go try to win another FedExCup," McIlroy said after a final-round 66 on Sunday.
The defending FedExCup champion enters the Tour Championship in a different spot than last year, when he began the week (and the final round) six shots back, thanks to the championship's starting strokes format. This year, he's the No. 3 seed, starting at 7 under and three shots back.
It's a seemingly miniscule difference, but after being as far as 10 back at one point last year, the three-stroke improvement provides the solace of starting the week in a more manageable position.
The guy he's chasing is still the same though, and he'll need to keep the current truce with his short game if he wants to catch world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler once again.
McIlroy arrived at the FedEx St. Jude Championship two weeks ago with a new putter – a Scotty Cameron Phantom X T5.5 Tour Prototype mallet. The world No. 2 grabbed the club from the collection in his garage in an effort to freshen up his short game. At the time, he entered the first playoff event ranked 84th on Tour in strokes gained: putting. In the two weeks since, he's improved that rank to 75th.
It's not a miraculous turnaround, but McIlroy didn't seem to expect that. He just needed something to click – that little extra oomph that saw more putts dropping than rolling past or coming up short, complimenting his top-ranked driving.
On Sunday at Olympia Fields, in a round of 66, McIlroy said his game came together.
"I'm playing great tee to green, the best I've played in a long time," McIlroy said after the round. "Going to have to drive the ball probably a little straighter, but I felt like I found something on the back nine there today to go into next week."
Still, after shooting three under par rounds in the 60s, McIlroy isn't 100% sold on the new putter that's gotten him to this point in the playoffs.
So will it be the Scotty Cameron mallet or the TaylorMade Spider X in his bag when he tees off on Thursday?
"I might dabble with the Spider again on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Tour Championship," McIlroy admitted. "I felt like I hit good putts [with the Scotty Cameron].
"Again, I holed some really good putts, and I missed some short ones, and sort of hard here with the short ones and how much break they had and, with the grain sort of – I always felt like I was aiming too high and then I'd miss them low because I just couldn't commit to aiming it so far outside the hole. Getting back on greens that I know pretty well and pretty confident on next week, I'm looking forward to that."
As is the nature of golf, players often find "something" just to lose it shortly after.
If that something for McIlroy is a short game fix, compromise, or another club change, it's an important choice that will play a key role in determining whether the Northern Irishman hoists the FedExCup trophy for a second-straight year.