[PHOTO: Icon Sportswire]
When you’ve gone almost seven years since your most recent PGA Tour win, it would be easy to get overly excited. Instead, 3M Open champion Jhonattan Vegas was hoping for boring.
“You can’t really be thinking too much about winning, you’ve just got to be thinking about playing good golf,” he said after the third round. “As boring as that might sound, you’ve just got to keep it as simple as possible. If the win comes, absolutely amazing, but at the end of the day I just want to keep playing good golf and enjoy that part of the game.”
Vegas played incredible golf on Saturday, which allowed him the luxury of playing simply good golf during the final round to earn a one-shot win over Max Greyserman, who hit possibly the shot of the tournament on the par-5 18th hole to nearly earn a spot in a playoff after a blistering 63.
For Vegas, a one-under 70 got it done, but he needed some back-nine heroics once again. At one-over for the round after a bogey on the 13th hole, Vegas birdied the 15th with a 8-iron from 159 metres to nine feet.
Vegas’ irons are the same Mizuno MP-4 model he used for his last win at the 2017 RBC Canadian Open with Project X 7.0 shafts. Vegas used the irons – which Mizuno introduced in 2013 – to rank eighth in both strokes gained/approach the green and greens in regulation. How old are those irons? Consider the 3M Open didn’t even exist at the time they were introduced.
Vegas then birdied the par-5 finisher to nip Greyserman with an otherworldly two-putt from 96 feet with his L.A.B. Golf Link.1 putter. Vegas did not have a single three-putt for the 72 holes.
Not so boring after all.
The clubs Jhonattan Vegas used to win the 2024 3M Open:
Ball: Titleist Pro V1x
Driver: Titleist TSi3 (Fujikura Speeder NX70 TX), 9 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade M6, 14 degrees
Irons (3): Titleist T200; (4-PW): Mizuno MP 4
Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM10 (50, 55 degrees); TaylorMade Milled Grind Hi Toe (60 degrees)
Putter: L.A.B. Golf Link.1