Chesson Hadley won’t call it a choke, but, well… you get the idea.

Leading by four shots entering Sunday and in control late on the back nine at Congaree Golf Club, Hadley bogeyed each of his final three holes to finish a shot back of Palmetto Championship winner Garrick Higgo, who was six strokes behind with one round to play.

“I hate the word choked,” Hadley said. “That's not the right word because that's a very negative word, but I didn't handle it the way I needed to handle it.”

Hadley’s late slide actually started at the par-4 15^th hole, where he came up well short of the green with a wedge and had to get up and down from a bunker just to save par. He then drew a tough lie in a fairway bunker at the par-4 16^th and had to lay up before yanking drives and missing greens on each of the last two holes.

Hadley hit just four greens in regulation during his final-round, 4-over 75.

“If I had shot 75 the first round and then 65-66-68, I'd be tickled,” Hadley said. “But this one – you know, it sucks, right? I can only imagine what it looked like on TV because it looked freakin' awful from my view. I mean, I could barely keep it on the planet.”

Hadley’s T-2 finish bumped him up to No. 111 in the FedExCup standings, but Hadley knew what he had let slip away.

“I was planning on kind of doing my thing today, and I might not have showed up until the Wyndham (regular-season finale), but I've got to go keep after it,” he quipped. “I made a nice jump today in the FedExCup, but I still probably need to just get some more points if I'm going to head on to Liberty National. Plenty of golf left to see if we can't get in the mix a few more times and maybe seal the deal on one.”