won the 3M Open in only his third start<\/a>, narrowly hung on to the 70th spot and goes from college to the postseason in only two months. But he had to sweat it out after closing with a 71. <\/p>\nMatt Wallace and Davis Thompson were still on the course and in range of finishing high enough to bump Koivun out of the top 70. But they failed to hole all the key putts, and Koivun made it with eight points to spare.<\/p>\n
A bogey might have been enough to knock him out of the postseason. But on the 18th hole Sunday, Koivun piped his drive straight down the middle, leaving a wedge from the fairway and an easy par. Known for his composure, he was emotionally invested in every outcome down the stretch, a rare sight from the last two months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just it\u2019s a different type of nerves when you know you don\u2019t have your stuff and you\u2019ve got to go out there and execute some shots,\u201d Koivun said. \u201cI think that kind of sparked some emotion in me. Yeah, it\u2019s easier to get comfortable when you\u2019re playing well. It was just kind of a different feeling for me today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brennan started feeling the nerves, too. He was four shots behind in a tie for fourth going into the final round of the 3M Open and shot 74 to finish out of the top 20. Last week at the Rocket Classic, he was in the final group and one shot out of the lead when he went the wrong direction again, closing with a 73 to tie for 15th.<\/p>\n
He delivered in the final event of the regular season, and it was his mother who came onto the 18th green to celebrate who reminded Brennan the victory also sends him to the Masters. He made his Masters debut this year going from the PGA Tour Americas straight to the big leagues\u00a0when he won the Bank of Utah Championship last fall.<\/p>\n
Brennan made birdie on the final hole to finish at 22-under 258, matching the tournament record at Sedgefield shot three other times, most recently last year by Wake Forest grad Cameron Young.<\/p>\n
Ben James, the No. 1 player from the PGA Tour University ranking who has a card already secure for 2027, fell out of contention on Saturday but roared back with a 61 to finish third.<\/p>\n
Brennan was the only player to move into the top 70, replacing Steven Fisk, who was at No. 69 but missed the cut Friday and fell to No. 71.<\/p>\n
Also failing to advance to the postseason was\u00a0Brooks Koepka, the first player to rejoin the PGA Tour after being at LIV Golf.\u00a0Koepka needed a fourth-place finish and was saddled again by poor putting that led to a tie for 67th. The five-time major champion had only one top 10 this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just all on the greens. I don\u2019t know what they deal is, got zero confidence,\u201d Koepka said. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of changes here soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s pretty pathetic that I can\u2019t get through (to the postseason),\u201d he said. \u201cTo be in the prime of your career and be as good as I think I am, I think that\u2019s very pathetic, disappointing. Just need to go home and completely reevaluate everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then it was a matter of hanging on for the 24-year-old Brennan, a Virginia native who played his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2256,2000,44,18849,1999,18848,18850,18846,18847,531,2003,17349,692,7051,2001,16993,3617],"class_list":["post-48407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pga-championship","tag-celebration","tag-color-image","tag-golf","tag-greensboro-north-carolina","tag-horizontal","tag-kissing","tag-michael-brennan-golfer","tag-mother","tag-north-carolina-us-state","tag-pga-championship","tag-photography","tag-sedgefield-country-club","tag-sport","tag-us-pga-tour","tag-usa","tag-winning","tag-wyndham-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}