Johnson, Koepka top 3M field

[July 21, 2020]    Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, who finished a combined 28 shots over par last week at the Memorial Tournament, highlight the field for the 3M Open this week in Blaine, Minn.

Johnson, ranked No. 4 in the world, is the top-rated player who will tee it up at TPC Twin Cities beginning Thursday. The only other top-10 player entered is No. 6 Koepka.

The 3M Open announced its featured pairings on Monday.

At the Memorial, Johnson shot back-to-back rounds of 8-over-par 80 to miss the cut and come in next-to-last among players who completed 36 holes. The result was a surprise considering Johnson had won his most recent tournament, the Travelers Championship at Cromwell, Conn., two weeks earlier.

Koepka barely made the cut last week in Dublin, Ohio, then shot 73-80 on the weekend to tie for 62nd place at 12-over 300. It was his second consecutive poor result, as he missed the cut the previous week in the Workday Charity Open, played on the same Muirfield Village course as the Memorial.

Johnson will be paired Thursday and Friday with England's Tommy Fleetwood, the third-highest rated player in the field at No. 12, and Tony Finau.

Fleetwood will be appearing in his first event since the PGA Tour returned to action in mid-June after a three-month hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Before the shutdown, Fleetwood finished in the top three in four of his past seven worldwide events, including a victory in the European Tour's Nedbank Golf Challenge in November at Sun City, South Africa. However, he missed the cut in his most recent start, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in early March.

Finau came in eighth at the Memorial after holding the outright lead following the first round and sharing the lead after the second round.

Koepka will be paired with Keith Mitchell and Charles Howell III.

In another pairing revealed Monday, defending 3M Open champion Matthew Wolff will play alongside Max Homa and South Africa's Branden Grace.

Wolff, 21, posted the only title of his young PGA Tour career last year when he sank a 26-foot eagle putt on the last hole to top Bryson DeChambeau and Collin Morikawa by one shot. He has only two top-10 finishes since then, but one of them was a second-place result in the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit earlier this month.

The 3M Open is heading into its second year on the PGA Tour schedule.

--Field Level Media

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