Most of the world’s elite golfers are taking the week off after the Open Championship, but for the second tier of PGA Tour players, it’s time to lock in and bolster their resumes.
With two weeks to go in the regular season, players will be all business at the 3M Open, beginning Thursday at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minn.
There’s no shortage of recognizable names in the field — Sam Burns, Wyndham Clark, South Korea’s Sungjae Im and Australia’s Adam Scott among them — as they try to stack up FedEx Cup points before the regular season concludes next week at the Wyndham Championship.
For Tony Finau, a former 3M Open champion, the stakes are certainly higher than usual. At No. 59 in the points race, he’s inside the top 70 who will qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs, but only the top 50 after the first playoff leg will advance. Finishing inside the top 50 also means access to next year’s signature events.
“Yeah, it’s definitely in the back of my mind because I know how important that top-50 number is,” Finau said Wednesday. “So it’s definitely something in the back of my mind, but that’s really where it is, it’s back. At the forefront of my mind this week is playing good golf … If you play good golf, it always — things always take care of themselves.”
Finau has played all six editions of the 3M Open and never finished worse than T28. Of his 24 rounds at the par-71, 7,431-yard TPC Twin Cities, he’s only shot worse than 70 once. Finau followed his breakthrough victory in 2022 with T7 and T12 finishes the past two years.
“Winning in ’22 is a highlight, but I’ve had some nice finishes,” Finau said. “It’s a golf course that I enjoy playing, usually yields some birdies and I always look forward to being back here in Minnesota.”
Lee Hodges set the tournament scoring record of 24-under 260 when he won in 2023, and Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas prevailed last year for his first victory on tour since 2017.
“To be honest, it’s been kind of nice to see a pretty solid field this week,” Vegas said. “And I mean, these tournaments are so important right now. I was talking to some other players early on where it doesn’t matter where you are in the standings right now, you’re always fighting for something, and with so many little tournaments before the playoffs now, especially this kind of few tournaments at the end of the season mean a lot.”
Something else the American players are fighting for right now: Ryder Cup points. The top six Americans in qualification points as of Aug. 17 will automatically make the team, and Keegan Bradley’s six captain’s picks are such a mystery that he’s widely expected to choose himself.
Finau, at No. 21 in those standings, has work to do to prove he belongs on the team. One spot below him is a recent surprise, Chris Gotterup.
The 26-year-old Gotterup won his second PGA Tour event two weeks ago at the Genesis Scottish Open, then contended at the Open Championship on the weekend before finishing a distant third to Scottie Scheffler. Still, it boosted him to No. 27 in the Official World Golf Ranking and No. 23 in the FedEx Cup race.
“Going over (to Europe) ranked 80th or whatever I was and coming back 20-whatever, I feel like I have a different set of circumstances in front of me,” Gotterup said. “I would like to get to (the Tour Championship at) East Lake and then, obviously, see what happens from there.”
–Field Level Media
