Only in the FedExCup Fall can a loss still feel like a win.

For Chandler Phillips, who finished second at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, walking away without a trophy is just fine this week.

Phillips notched his best-career PGA TOUR finish while also moving up 47 spots in the FedExCup Fall standings to No. 92. No guarantee quite yet, but he’s feeling much better heading into The RSM Classic than he was about 24 hours ago.

Especially considering how much of a grind this week – and Sunday’s finale in particular – was. He ended up one back of Adam Schenk, who won for the first time on TOUR in his 234th start.

“It's hard as hell, man. I love playing in the wind, but this was, this was the most I've ever played in,” Phillips said. “Adam played obviously great, congrats to him. I'm just happy with my finish. If we would have been going in a playoff, that would have been better, but it's hard to really even get mad about anything.”

Even with tee times moved up by an hour due to extremely high winds, players were still forced to make all kinds of decisions and hit all kinds of different shots Sunday – Phillips included. He said he “never” backs off a shot once he’s committed to it, but said he had to reset about 10 times on Sunday.

Phillips ended up shooting an even-par 71 in the final round and said par was a good score all day.

He said to his playing partners on the day, Adam Hadwin and Max McGreevy, that it was the “hardest round of golf” he had ever played in his life, considering the circumstances.

Phillips was quick to admit, and reiterate, that his 2025 campaign has not been a good one. He missed about the same number of cuts as he made this season, and his runner-up result in Bermuda was his first individual top-10 finish of the season (his previous, a T10, came at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans).

But he’s got this fine finish on the books, and for the PGA TOUR finale at Sea Island, he’ll return to some happy hunting ground – the courses, he said, he played “a ton” when he was at Texas A&M.

Momentum and comfort (well, save for one thing: He said he is supposed to have engagement photos on Sea Island early in the week, which he is not excited for ... ) sounds like a pretty good recipe for even more season-ending success on the course.

“I'm happy just to be inside the top 100 now. I know I've got one week left, but at least I'm not going into next week in the same position I was this week, looking at it like ‘God, I've got to win to have a job out here,’” Phillips said. “Hopefully I play pretty solid next week and see y'all next year.”