PGA Tour
Jackpot!: Jhonattan Vegas ends 7-year victory drought at 3M Open with pressure-packed birdie on final hole
Icon Sportswire
Well, someone was going to break his victory drought Sunday in the 3M Open. Coming down the stretch at TPC Twin Cities, four men were locked in a tie for the lead. Two hadn’t won in this decade. Another two hadn’t won a PGA Tour event in their respective careers. Turns out that the guy who had been waiting the longest got it done, and he did it in style.
Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas, making a comeback from injury, buried a three-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to win for the first time in seven years to beat rookie Max Greyserman by a stroke to collect his fourth career victory.
“You know, it hasn't been easy, that's for sure. It's been a lot of grinding, a lot of dealing with injuries, a lot of headaches, but these are the moments that you get up every day and you work hard, you do all the right things because nothing feels better than this,” said Vegas, who ended a drought of six years, 363 days since he successfully defended his title in the 2017 RBC Canadian Open.
“This is a special place for me. I got a lot of friends that were here. It's a course that I really connected extremely well [with] three years ago when I came in second, so I knew it was a golf course that I had a great chance of playing well. Obviously, expectations were not trying to win, we're just trying to have a great week and obviously a great week turned into a win. I'm out of my head right now, so it's incredible.”
The performance wasn’t exactly incredible, but Vegas, ranked 321st in the world and just a few weeks shy of his 40th birthday, came up big when he needed it on the par-5 home hole. After striping a 326-yard drive, he pulled his approach from 209 yards, but the ball caught the front left portion of the green, leaving him a mammoth putt of 96 feet. Greyserman had two-putted for birdie earlier from 79 feet to take the clubhouse lead after a gutsy 4-iron that he hooked over the water from the left trees.
Vegas, who had tied Greyserman with a nine-foot birdie on 15, had been seen jumping up and down in the 18th fairway to shake off nerves before his wayward approach, but he was calm with the putter—one he had put in the bag last month in Detroit at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. He sent his first putt three feet by and then buried the next for the victory. His final-round one-under 70 gave him a 17-under 267 total.
Greyserman, in his 22nd tour start, carded an inward 30 to post a bogey-free 63. Matt Kuchar, seeking his 10th tour title at age 46, tied for third with Maverick McNealy.
At one point, Vegas, Kuchar, McNealy and Greyserman were tied at 15 under with the first three, playing in the same group, through 14 holes while Greyserman had only the 18th remaining. When he hooked his tee shot well left behind a stand of trees, his chances looked dicey, and it appeared he would have to lay up, but instead he went for the green, hitting what he called “a low stock draw 4-iron.”
“At that point in the tournament you've just got to go for it, so I just went for it,” said the 29-year-old New Jersey native. “Yeah, that's a conversation, you know, because as a rookie you want to get as many points as possible. Sometimes you're thinking about second or third place, not just the win. I hit that in the water, I make bogey or something and all of a sudden I'm coughing up 100, 200 FedEx Cup points, a lot of money, stuff like that. At the end of the day we play to win, right, so that was the kind of the conversation.”
Kuchar missed an 18-footer at the last that would have momentarily given him a share of the lead before Vegas’ winning putt. He settled for a 71, while McNealy two-putted for birdie at the last for 70 to join Kuchar at 15-under 269. Kuchar rose 44 places in the FedEx Cup standings to 111th, but has only one event left, in two weeks at the Wyndham Championship, to reach the top 70 and keep his streak alive as the only player to make the playoffs every season since their inception in 2007, a run of 17 years.
“Certainly making the playoffs, keeping my job for next year, they're all checkmarks,” said Kuchar, who was trying to win for the first time since the 2019 Sony Open in Hawaii. “I normally like to check these off a lot earlier in the year than right now, but its the bed I made. Certainly helpful. It is on my mind, it is something that I know is kind of back there. I don't want to miss the playoffs, don't want to miss top-125, all those things you tend to try to check off somewhere on the West Coast, but here I am late in the year trying to still check them off.”
Playing on a major medical extension, Vegas, the third-round leader by one over Kuchar, knew the clock was ticking for him, too. He had surgery on his right elbow in 2022 to have a piece of bone removed and in May 2023 he underwent right shoulder surgery, that injury resulting from coming back too soon from the elbow operation. The shoulder still felt a little dodgy, especially on Sunday.
He never once thought about putting his clubs away. Good thing, too. “That never crossed my mind. I've always fought through a lot of stuff to be sitting here,” Vegas said. ”The goal's always been to get into this position. Obviously, it came a little earlier than I thought it would, but I just kept working every day, kept seeing my therapist, kept seeing all my doctors. We knew we were on a good path, we just had to wait for the shoulder to respond. Luckily, it did for most of this week.”
Vegas came into the week 149th in the FedEx Cup and left having moved into playoff territory at 66th. The win comes with a two-year exemption, a berth in the Masters, the Players and the PGA Championship, and, lest we forget, a $1.458 million payday.
But that wasn’t the best part. He shared the victory with his wife Hildegard and his two children, daughter Sharlene and son Louis.
“That was the cherry on top of the cake,” Vegas said. “In my house we've had a lot of talks, my boy's five, hadn't had a win since he was born. Lots of pictures of my daughter with trophies around the house, so my boy was asking me when am I going to have a picture with a trophy? Like I said earlier, there was a big cloud on top of my head because I need to have a win for him. It's even more special that they were here because a lot of times they're not. It just means the world. This is a big win for them and they're going to enjoy it more than I am, for sure.”