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Vets rule at 3M Open as Jhonattan Vegas and Matt Kuchar are in front, Sahith Theegala lurking
BLAINE, Minn. – The leaderboard at the 3M Open is topped by a couple of crafty veterans who haven’t been there much of late, but some young challengers are lurking heading into the final round at TPC Twin Cities.
Jhonattan Vegas fired one of four rounds of 63 on Saturday to climb to 16-under 197 and claim a one-stroke leader over Matt Kuchar.
Vegas, 39, is playing on a major-medical extension after undergoing two surgeries the previous two years and entered the week at No. 149 in the FedEx Cup. He’s seeking his first win since the 2017 RBC Canadian Open. Kuchar, 46, entered the week at No. 155 in the FedEx Cup and winless since the 2020 Sony Open in Hawaii.
Midway through Saturday’s third round there was a five-way tie for the lead after 36-hole leader Taylor Pendrith, who played his first 38 holes without a bogey, hit a string of three bogeys in four holes and then made a double at No. 11. He finished at 2-over 73 and drifted back to T-9.
TPC Twin Cities is known to be a birdie-fest but with 27 water hazards and throw in wind gusting to 28 miles per hour and it was a recipe for a day of volatility on the leaderboard.
Patrick Fishburn, Maverick McNealy, Kuchar and Vegas took advantage of a few tees being moved up and still lit up the Arnold Palmer design to the tune of 63. Sahith Theegala, who is lurking four back (T-4), took his hat off to the players who went low and McNealy and Fishburn both agreed it likely will take another low round on Sunday to take home the trophy.
“I think tomorrow's going to be even more difficult, greens are going to be even firmer, winds are going to be up just as high,” McNealy said. “As you can see by the guys on the leaderboard, you're still going to have to go make a bunch of birdies tomorrow.”
Here are five things to know from the third round of the 2024 3M Open.
3M Open: Leaderboard | Photos | Merchandise
Vegas, baby!
Jhonattan Vegas is 39 and the three-time Tour winner hasn’t tasted victory since the 2017 RBC Canadian Open. He’s playing off of a major medical extension this season with 25 starts to earn 327 points (he’s earned 180 coming into this week). The Venezuelan hasn’t recorded a top-10 finish since the Corales Puntacana Championship in March 2022. He also didn’t play between the 2023 Valspar Championship in March and the Sony Open in Hawaii in January after undergoing two surgeries – one to his right elbow and the other to his right shoulder.
“I tried to play through it,” he said of elbow injury, “which caused a little inflammation in the right shoulder the following year, so I had to have another surgery then the following year in '23. So it's not 100 percent, it's never going to be 100 percent. Anytime you have surgery, especially two surgeries in one arm, it's never fun. So still dealing with it, but obviously slowly getting better, which is nice to feel.”
Vegas has been returning to form with three straight made cuts and is coming off his best result in 14 starts this season, a T-20 at the John Deere Classic. This week, he’s played the front nine in even par, which includes a triple bogey on Thursday, and the back side in 16 under. His game has been a balanced attack: second in Strokes Gained: Approach, third in SG: Tee to Green and seventh in SG: Putting. How does it feel to be back in contention for his first win in more than seven years?
“Good. I mean, really good,” he said. “Obviously a lot of the effort is definitely paying back, which is what you always want to feel. Just kind of makes you feel like you're doing the right thing and you've just got to keep working hard.”
Roars for KUCH!
Matt Kuchar remembers being eight years old and the name on the back of his first soccer jersey said simply, “Kuch.” It’s a nickname that has stuck all these years.
“It is fun to hear the Kuchs wherever I go,” he said.
There hasn’t been many reasons to cheer for Kuchar this year, who missed the cut in nine of his first 11 starts this season. He’s made five of his last seven cuts but still has recorded just one top-20 finish all season and is in jeopardy of failing to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs for the first time. He’s the only player to qualify for all 17 editions.
“Gosh, I haven't lost my job in a long time, I certainly don't want this year to be the year I lose my job,” he said.
Time is running out but Kuchar is fighting hard this week. On Saturday, he chipped in for eagle at the last hole to shoot 8-under 63, his best round of the season by two strokes.
“When I hit it I knew it was going to be good, knew it was going to be at least close to the hole, and for it to go in was a very cool finish,” he said. “It was awfully exciting to have that many people get so excited when the ball disappeared.”
Despite a birdie at No. 2, it didn’t look as if Kuchar was going to mount a charge after he tugged his tee shot into the water at the fourth and took three putts to make double bogey. But he bounced back with four straight birdies.
“I pride myself in kind of letting things wash off my back pretty easily, but to bounce back with four straight birdies after a silly double was awfully nice,” said Kuchar, who made nearly 120 feet of putts on the day.
He added three more birdies on the back nine to go along with the eagle chip-in at the last. The best of the bunch was a 7-iron at the par-3 17th that he stuffed to tap-in range. Kuchar has won nine times on the PGA Tour and No. 10 would take care of his playoff plans; a runner-up would leave him at No. 95 with work to do at the Wyndham Championship, but Kuchar wasn’t too concerned with those details.
“Golf gets fun when you’ve got a chance on Sunday,” he said. “As pros we sometimes feel a long way away. Certainly this year has felt like a long way away for me. But I think if you can plug the right ingredient in, pros are never that far away from snapping back. Hopefully we've kind of got the right ingredient in for this thing to maintain for another day, another week, another month, another year.”
McNealy's wedge clinic
Maverick McNealy’s wife Maya walked all 18 holes on a hot, sunny day but as she put it, “it was an entertaining watch, for sure.” That it was. McNealy birdied half the holes at TPC Twin Cities and made just one bogey – at 13 when he smoked a 4-iron long that hit a spectator and failed to get up and down – to improve to 14-under 199 and alone in third.
McNealy, 28, rattled in a 16-foot putt at the first and made birdie on half of his first twelve holes to tie Taylor Pendrith at 12 under. He would birdie three of his final four holes, including a two-putt birdie at 18, to post 63. He made it look easy, wedging inside six feet four different times to set up birdies.
“I've worked on wedges a lot,” said McNealy who also had to flight them properly with gusty winds. “It honestly felt like The Open Championship was great prep for today though because I was chipping 9-iron on 16 from 120. That's a shot you hit over in Scotland, you don't expect to hit in Minnesota when it's 95 degrees.”
McNealy entered the week at No. 68 in the FedEx Cup, and in his seventh year as a pro, he’s seeking his first win on the PGA Tour.
“I was No. 1 in college. How many No. 1s in college do you think are out on the PGA Tour right now? There's dozens and dozens and dozens and guys who have gotten a lot better. I'm a better player now than I was in college, but the competition I'm playing against is really, really good," he said. "I just shot 5 under, 8 under the last two rounds and I'm probably going to have to go shoot mid 60s tomorrow to win this thing, so it's really hard out here.”
Fishburn changes it up
Patrick Fishburn has struggled for most of his rookie campaign on the PGA Tour but he’s finished 15th and T-3 the last two weeks and heads into the final round of the 3M Open at T-4 after shooting a bogey-free 63 on Saturday.
Fishburn, 32, started the season by missing the cut in seven of his first eight starts, but he’s always been a slow starter so he didn’t panic. But his putting had been so dreadful that three weeks ago he switched to putting cross-handed using an arm lock Odyssey Jailbird 380 putter and it’s made all the difference.
“A lot of adjustments. I completely changed the way I grip the putter, changed putters, changed the loft on the putter, everything you can think of with putting,” he said. “There was nothing to lose because it couldn’t be any worse than it was.”
Perhaps the best example of his putter being more friend than foe happened at the par-5 12th when he chunked a chip and left himself a 20-footer and canned it.
“You've got to make a birdie to keep it going,” he said. “Changes your game if you can make a putt.”
Fishburn, who entered the week at No. 117 in the FedEx Cup, made the biggest jump up the leaderboard on Moving Day but knows he will need another low one on Sunday.
“There's so many good players, you have to just keep the pedal down,” he said. “Even with the conditions like this, you still have to shoot really good scores to have a chance. It's going to take my best again tomorrow.”
Theegala's revenge week continues
Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. It’s not ice fishing season in the Twin Cities but Theegala is getting the best of a TPC Twin Cities course that had kicked his butt in his first three appearances. The 3M Open is the only tournament that he has played at least three times and never made the cut. Yet, he came back this week to get revenge.
“I really tried to make an emphasis on this week to get over that hurdle I have with the course. Just the way my game's been throughout my life, I usually don't have courses that I feel like don't suit me that well. I'm just an optimist about a lot of golf courses and I'm like, well, the course is how it is, you've just got to figure it out, right?” he said.
On Saturday, Theegala, 26, continued his revenge tour with his third straight round in the 60s, shooting 5-under 66. He made three birdies in a four-hole stretch starting at No. 9 to climb to 11 under. He tacked on a birdie at 14, made his lone bogey at 17 and finished with one more circle on the card at 18 to tie Fishburn for fourth place, just four back of the lead.
Aiding him in his revenge week is a putter change. Theegala benched his Ping Karsten TR 1966 Anser 2 prototype gamer that he’s used for the last eight or so years and inserted a Ping PLD Tyne S for this week.
“I just wanted to see something different,” he said. “I do a lot of tinkering off tournament weeks. I have a set of practice putters at home where I just pick up a different putter and feel it out and then when I go back to my gamer, it feels incredible and I fall in love with it all over. Been doing that a little bit and try and make it intentional in a way where it's going to help me with my gamer.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Vets rule at 3M Open as Jhonattan Vegas and Matt Kuchar are in front, Sahith Theegala lurking
