The Wyndham championship still had a perfect ending.

The first appearance of Tiger Woods at the Wyndham championship had record crowds showing up at Sedgefield Country Club since Thursday. And Woods had them at hello when he shot a first-round 64 and was still in striking distance going into Sunday’s final round. Tiger had to win to get into the FedEx playoffs that I don’t understand if the 286th ranked golfer in the world can get in with a single win in the last event of the season.

But Tiger faltered on the back nine Sunday with a horrendous triple bogey on No. 11, including a skulled chip and a chunked chip to take a seven and lose any chance of posting his first victory of a sad, sad season on the links. He was wearing his Sunday red, but was seeing red when he ended the day tied for 10th place and complaining that his hip was bothering him all weekend. Whatever.

But the real perfect ending was former UNC star Davis Love III firing his own 64 to win the Wyndham for the third time and his first PGA event in seven years. Love, who is now better known as the U.S. Ryder Cup captain, is 51 and the third oldest pro to ever win on the tour. He has always been one of the most popular athletes to come out of Carolina, and his senior-Cinderella victory Sunday had to leave even the biggest Tiger fans still satisfied.

Love won his twenty-first PGA tourney, which at his age may be the sweetest of his career. And he was also coming off foot surgery three months ago, so beating a pretty good field in Greensboro is pretty remarkable. The regular on the Champions Senior tour, Love now is in the FedEx Cup playoffs and will begin with the young kids at the Barclays this weekend. His eagle at the par 5 15th hole put him ahead and left him in the clubhouse watching guys half his age trying to force a playoff down the back nine. None of them could do it.

Only Sam Snead and Art Wall were older than Love when they won PGA events, and that was a long time ago before all the young guns showed up on the tour.  But the $972,000 check comes with a chance to compete for the $10 million that goes to the qualifying player with the most points in the complicated Fed Ex Cup formula for victory. That Love reached the 125 points needed to make him a FedEx entry gave Sunday a happy ending for him and most golf fans. Unlike the polarizing figure that is Tiger, Davis Love is easy to Love.

And he’s a Tar Heel winning on Tar Heel soil, so what could be better than that?

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