Doug Flutie's Hail Mary has nothing on Sunday's comebacks

So, were you watching?

No need to eyeball the Nielsens, really, because the answer has been borne out over time. When the PGA Tour season meanders sleepily into the Fall Season, then off to Asia for a couple of semi-official events in the wee hours, most fans have long since channeled their attention toward football, or perhaps, their pillows.

Let us be the first to rub it in, though we had to rub our eyes to earn the right to say it.

All you missed were 2011's best Hail Mary finishes, fare that Doug Flutie and Billy "White Shoes" Johnson would have found hair-raising on their best heave-it-and-hope days.

For merit and global impact, Charl Schwartzel's consecutive birdies on the last four holes to win the Masters was the chart-topper of the season. No winner had ever birdied the final four holes of a major championship in the television era. The fan thunderclap shook windowpanes at the Augusta National clubhouse.

But for sheer doggedness and determination, the Month of Sundays at the end of the PGA Tour season cannot be topped for volume or volatility. In successive final rounds, as every stat and gut instinct screamed that the eventual winners were dead and buried, they saved the best for last.

Of the six lowest final-round scores recorded by winners during the PGA Tour play, five were recorded in the last five starts, almost uniformly by players facing Sunday odds that straddled the border of absurdity and impossibility.

The flash fireworks truly began with Ben Crane lying on his back before the final round of the McGladrey Classic, four weeks ago. All year, he had grumbled and groused about why his season had been so disappointing compared to his breakthrough, two-victory year of 2010.

As he was lying in the workout area, limbering up, it occurred to him that he could glean as much from his train wrecks as triumphs, and he turned to his trainer, upbeat for the first time in weeks. Call it an epiphany.

"After basically complaining all year, for the first time all season, I said, 'You know what? It's been a great year, because I have learned so much,'" Crane recalled this week.

So did we. Like, it ain't over until every improbable arithmetic possibility has been exhausted. If not euthanized.

Just inside the top 10 heading into the final round, Crane was an insurmountable eight strokes off the lead with 11 holes to play at Sea Island when an entire season of wrongs went right. In the most incredible 150-minute span of his career, Crane didn't just get hot, he got nuclear.

He birdied eight of his next 10 holes and closed with a 7-under 63, which matched the lowest score by a winner all season relative to par, after he dispatched Webb Simpson in a playoff.

That distinction lasted ... seven days. Is there an echo in here?

In a fashion, Bryce Molder started the Sunday onslaught a week before Crane's comeback, at the Frys.com Open, with a closing 7-under 64, though it was mostly overlooked because of the 90-minute playoff that ensued with Briny Baird. In recording his first victory, Molder birdied five of his last 10 holes in regulation.

A month later, that feat elicited yawns by comparison.

One week after Crane's comeback, world No. 1 Luke Donald played in the official season finale at Disney World in a last-ditch attempt to win the PGA Tour money title and secure support for a Player of the Year bid. Donald also was on the cusp of rigor mortis at the midpoint of the final round in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

In what seemed a killing blow, he sloppily bogeyed the par-5 eighth hole at Disney to fall to T10, five strokes off the lead with 10 holes left to play. A couple of us who were following his threesome hustled back into the media center to, you know, watch the guys who still had a chance to win the title. Bad decision. It wasn't over by a long shot, much less a short wedge.

In a defining moment of his career, Donald recorded birdies on the first six holes on the back nine to finish with an 8-under 64, the lowest Sunday round by a winner all season relative to par. After freely admitting all week that he needed to win the official-money finale to have any real shot at postseason chrome, Donald won by two strokes -- effectively picking up seven shots in 10 incredible holes.

This Fantasyland fare just doesn't happen, especially not in consecutive weeks.