A healthy, rejuvenated Jhonattan Vegas returns to Twin Cities to defend his 3M Open title

USA Today

4 days ago

Golf is one of the few sports where it's never too late for a career resurgence. The game has seen countless players find success early, stumble along the way, suffer injuries and setbacks, then burst back onto the scene with a win no one was expecting. Does the 2019 Masters ring a bell?
Tiger Woods' defeat of father time at Augusta six years ago is certainly the most notable example of a resurgence in golf, but there's another player who's revisiting his own instance of jumpstarting a career that was thought to be sliding away.
Jhonattan Vegas is back in Blaine, Minnesota at TPC Twin Cities for the 2025 3M Open, where he enters as the defending champion after a thrilling one-shot victory over Max Greyserman a year ago.
Vegas did so while playing on a medical exemption after suffering a shoulder injury that kept him out of competition for nearly the entire 2022-23 season.
But he fought back, and now the 40-year-old from Maturin, Venezuela, native gears up for this year's rendition of the 3M Open in an entirely different headspace than a year ago.
"Last year, when I was coming back from shoulder surgery and I was just kind of getting back into the grind of things, didn't really have a clue kind of where my game was and how it was developing week after week," Vegas said in his pre-tournament press conference Wednesday. "But obviously, a year later, I feel like I come in a way better position physically, mentally, everything is there just to make a really good run here at the end of the season. Like I said, a lot more focus on playing good golf than just trying to get my body ready to play."
The win at the 2024 3M Open, which was his fourth career victory on Tour but his first since 2017, wasn't a flash in the pan. He's followed it up with several solid performances in 2025, including a solo fourth at The Sentry in January and a T-5 at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow — his best career finish in a major by far.
Those outings, along with three other top-25 finishes, have him sitting safely inside the top-70 cutoff to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, for now. He's No. 53 in the standings as he tees it up in the Twin Cities.
Because of that newly-implemented top 70 threshold, late-season tournaments like the 3M Open are starting to get improved fields due to the fact that more players need points.
This week's field includes Chris Gotterup, Wyndham Clark, Rickie Fowler and Haotong Li — who all placed in the top 15 at the Open Championship this past weekend — as well as Adam Scott, Max Homa and Sungjae Im. Not to mention three other past 3M Open winners, Lee Hodges, Cameron Champ and Tony Finau.
"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," said Vegas, who didn't play in the Open. "[These] few tournaments at the end of the season mean a lot, so it's great to see a great field for a great tournament here, the sponsor deserves it, to have a great field.
"And it's fun. Like I said, everyone is ready for the playoffs so we're all pushing with the pedal down and just kind of hoping for a good finish."
Unlike most other PGA Tour events where the previous year's champion appears for a media day a few weeks ahead of the tournament, Wednesday was the local media's first look at Vegas since Sunday at the 2024 3M Open.
Why?
"My dad turned 70 about a month ago, and at the beginning of the year we made a trip for that week to go to Scotland and play golf," Vegas said. "He's never been, he's never played golf over there, so we wanted to give that experience to my dad. Unfortunately, it was the same week as media day, so you know, family first."
Vegas tees off in the first round of the 2025 3M Open on Thursday at 1:54 p.m. ET along with Haotong Li and Sam Burns.