3M Open Recap: Thompson Takes It Down

Based on the world rankings, Tony Finau -- at No. 17 -- was clearly the best golfer playing the weekend at the 3M Open. But the best player based on what happened on the course was clearly Michael Thompson -- the 218th-ranked player in the world.

Much of Golf Twitter expected this would be the week of Finau's first full-fledged PGA Tour win, and even more so after Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Tommy Fleetwood and Paul Casey all bowed out early. But Thompson made only three bogeys in methodically taking four trips around TPC Twins Cities to win for the first time in seven years. 

More on Finau in a minute.

For Thompson, this was a career-rejuvenating win. He's 35 years old. His win qualified him for the WGC event this week in Memphis, the PGA Championship next week and the U.S. Open in September, not to mention the 2021 -- but not the 2020 edition -- Masters. He's back in the top 100 of the OWGR, at No. 99, for the first time in six years.

His path to victory was simply masterful. While he ranked a below-average 51st in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, he was first in SG: Approach, second in scrambling and first in SG: Putting. Wow.

So you look at that and ask, rightfully so, how come he hasn't won more? This was his 228th career start and his only other win came at the 2013 Honda Classic. He had notched all of 17 top-10s before this past week. There are a couple reasons:

1. Because he's rarely this good. This season, for example, he has as many missed cuts as he has made and was outside the top 125 in four of the five SG: categories, all but putting.
2. Because in upwards of 20 tournaments a year some guy looks like this and we ask the same question and then we don't hear from him again for five years. It's the way things go on the PGA Tour these days -- so many quality players, so much depth. Guys have career weeks all the time. Just not the same guys, or the same careers.

Which brings us to Finau.

We won't say that Finau should have won this week -- as noted, there are too many good players who could win any given week, even in a subpar field. But we will say Finau should have won by now. 

Really, who even considers a win at the Puerto Rico Open a real win? Have you seen that factoid that no one who has won in Puerto Rico has ever won again on Tour? We're going to go out on a limb and say Viktor Hovland will win again. And, yes, Finau too.

In Minnesota, Finau wasn't great off the tee (ranked 29th), but it obviously didn't hurt him too much because he was still ranked third in SG: Tee-to-Green. And it wasn't necessarily his putter's fault, for a change, as he was ranked 36th in the field. Not great, but guys have won with worse.

You may have seen the stat, that, since 2016-17, Finau has the most top-10s without a win (30), far more than Fleetwood (16) and Kevin Streelman and Byeong-Hun An (15 each). What do all those guys have in common? Poor putting. That's usually the case with Finau, but as you saw he wasn't bad last week and, frankly, this has been his second-best putting year on Tour -- he's ranked 98th, which is better than average.

So, who knows why he didn't win? What we do know is that by now it is very much in his head. And also that it wasn't his caddie's fault. Swing coach Boyd Summerhays didn't change things and now Finau will put his brother on the bag.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Let's get some of the bigger names out of the way before going through the top of last week's leaderboard.

Tiger Woods
We're probably repeating ourselves. Woods wants to rest his balky back for the PGA Championship, so he's skipping Memphis. But he really needs more reps to contend in the next major. A dilemma. But two things support his decision: First, he'll be only three weeks removed from tournament golf at the PGA -- as opposed to the five months at the Memorial – and, second, Harding Park is very short. At 7,127 yards, it's virtually playing from the white tees based on PGA Championship history. That will even the playing field for Woods against the biggest hitters. And he's even won there, taking home the title at the 2005 WGC-American Express.

Brooks Koepka
If Koepka is going to make a dent this week, next week and in the playoffs soon after, it probably was a good thing he missed the cut at an event that doesn't really matter to him. Yes, he remains outside the top 150 in the FedExCup Standings, but if he's going to qualify for the playoffs he'll have to do well at least one of the next two weeks, and maybe both. What, he's gonna play the Wyndham Championship, too, before three weeks of playoff events? His knee might fall off.

Dustin Johnson
It doesn't appear that the double 80s Johnson shot at the Memorial had anything to do with the 78 that led to his withdrawal after the first round in Minneapolis. But we don't know for sure, as back injuries can be tricky. He's entered in this week's WGC event, but we don't know at this point whether he will tee it up on Thursday and, if he does, how good he can possibly be.

Paul Casey
Weak field, didn't matter. Casey hasn't played well since the restart and, in fact, hasn't played well all season.

Erik van Rooyen
That must've been really uncomfortable going back to his in-laws' house on Thursday night. And again on Friday night. And then packing on Saturday morning. We have no idea if that's how it played out, but what we do know is that van Rooyen had never had so much attention at a PGA Tour event and he obviously didn't deliver. He's had numerous good results before, and in bigger events -- a T8 at last year's PGA Championship, a T20 at the Open and a T3 at the WGC-Mexico. Maybe he'll be better when it's a not a home game.
 
Tommy Fleetwood
No matter how many 64s you shoot at Shinnecock, it's not tournament golf. Fleetwood looked rusty at times at the 3M Open before missing the cut. We understand that the golf calendar dictated his return, but this wasn't the best spot for him to return to competitive golf. Birdie-fests are not events he thrives in. 

Lee Westwood
Westwood officially bowed out of the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and the PGA Championship, then took grief on Twitter. C'mon. He made a decision for him and his family. It affected NOBODY else. Everybody should take a hike and leave him be.

Adam Long
Long quietly has put together a quality season – and that was before his solo second last week. Yes, he's missed the cut seven times in 21 appearances, but this was his third top-10 and ninth top-25. If the Tour Championship began today, he'd be in it.

Richy Werenski
Werenski has now played in 99 PGA Tour events. He has two seconds and three thirds, including the whopping nine-way tie for third last week, though both those runners-up were in alternate-field events. Still, that's pretty good. He began the day with a share of the lead and ended up with the worst score, at 1-under, among the top 30 on the leaderboard. In the biggest moment of his career, that's coming up really short. But we will give him props for turning water balls into pars not once, but twice Sunday.

Charl Schwartzel
Schwartzel is making a comeback from a wrist injury that cost him much of last year. His tie for third brought him to the edge of fulfilling his Major Medical Extension. With two starts left, he needs just two more FedExCup points, so he basically just has to make a cut. But he also is 114th in the Standings, so there's a good chance he's safe either way. His next start will probably be at the Wyndham Championship.

Alex Noren
The one-time top-10 player had fallen to 125th in the OWGR, his worst position in a decade. And when you're also 38 years old, people tend to go, "It's too bad he's still so far from the Champions Tour." But he tied for third last week, his best worldwide finish in more than two years. 

Emiliano Grillo
We've long railed about Grillo. Such a great tee-to-green game but putting so bad it's inconceivable. How bad? He entered the week dead last -- 215th out of 215 – in SG: Putting on Tour. Well, at the 3M, he was 27th in that department, plus fifth in SG: Tee-toGreen, and so he tied for third. Excluding the Puerto Rico Open, it was by far his best showing all season. Oh, and he's now ranked 214th in putting.

Matthew Wolff
A year removed from winning the inaugural 3M Open, Wolff is finally showing some consistency – a possible sign of maturation. He acquitted himself nicely in his title defense, tying for 12th. That follows his near-miss at the Rocket Mortgage and a top-25 at the Memorial. He didn't quite live up to his $9,700 DraftKings price, but he's getting there.

Xinjun Zhang
Zhang had a very good fall season, then all but disappeared once the calendar flipped to 2020. But he followed up a tie for 10th at the Memorial with a tie for 12th at the 3M Open, giving him a seventh top-25 on the season. He sits an impressive 58th in the Standings.

Cameron Davis
We've really liked this guy for a couple of years but, candidly, he hasn't panned out. He started to show signs earlier this year with the first top-10s of his brief PGA Tour career, but then again began missing cut after cut. In Minnesota he tied for 12th. The Aussie won the Australian Open at 22. He's still only 25, so the story is still being written.

Harris English
He recorded his 10th top-25 in 15 starts this season. Not much more to say other than nothing is stopping English this season, not even a positive COVID-19 test.

Matthias Schwab
The 25-year-old Austrian is a top-100 player, and he arrived last week to play the Memorial. He missed the cut there, but tied for 32nd at the 3M Open. Interestingly, he's in the field for the Barracuda Championship and will be one of the higher-ranked golfers there.

Sahith Theegala and Peter Kuest
An update on the college stars who recently turned pro: three missed cuts in three starts for Theegala, four in four starts for Kuest. They'll both be in the Barracuda Championship field. Theegala did win a Golden State Tour event a few weeks back, if that matters.

Keith Mitchell
He somehow got into a featured group. They couldn't give that spot to van Rooyen? It doesn't matter than van Rooyen also missed the cut. He's a top-50 golfer. All Mitchell did was show that he's a Not Ready for Prime Time Player, and, yes, we know he's won a tournament, a pretty good one at that. Still, he has more career missed cuts than top-25s.

Bubba Watson
There was Really Good Bubba before the stoppage -- top-6s at Torrey Pines and in Phoenix and a top-20 at the WGC-Mexico -- and then Really Good Bubba again after the restart (T7 at Colonial). And then we saw Really Bad Bubba (three MCs in four weeks). And then Maybe Rebounding Bubba (T32 at the Memorial). And then Same Old Bubba with a flame-out trunk-slam last week. 

Henrik Norlander
What a tournament for Norlander. A week after the best finish of his PGA Tour career, in terms of OWGR points, he rallied on the weekend to tie for 23rd at the 3M Open. The Memorial was an intense, stressful week for him and he bounced right back when many others would've been gassed. He's now made five straight cuts, three of them resulting in top-25s. Good stuff.

Rich Beem
For the past few years, The Beemer played in only one PGA Tour event every year – the PGA Championship, which he won out of nowhere back in 2002 at Hazeltine. But this season he also played in Houston and made the cut. Now just one month shy of 50, he got into the 3M Open field. Alas, he missed the cut by 1.