A lot ($1.5 million) on the line at LPGA’s CME Group Tour Championship

Two weeks ago, Cameron Champ looked like a player set to miss the FedExCup Playoffs due to his form in 2021. But he reminded us of all of his raw talent as he defied some terrible form to produce four days of beautiful golf at TPC Twin Cities where he claimed his third PGA TOUR win. RELATED: Final leaderboard | What’s in Champ’s bag? Here are five stories you may have missed from the 3M Open. 1. Form be damned, Champ knows how to win. Cameron Champ came to TPC Twin Cities at 142nd in the FedExCup standings and without a top-10 finish since last October at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. He ranked 206th on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting, 199th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green and 162nd in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. Even a T11 finish in his last start at the John Deere Classic wasn’t enough for people to seriously consider Champ as one to watch at the 3M Open. But riding an incredible +8.480 in Strokes Gained: Putting at TPC Twin Cities, Champ overcame Cameron Tringale’s 54-hole lead, and bettered sentimental favorite Louis Oosthuizen with a bogey-free 5-under 66 on Sunday to win. It’s his third TOUR win in 76 starts, seeing him join Collin Morikawa, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau as players 27 or younger (he’s 26) to win in each of the last three seasons. He’s now 49th in the FedExCup standings and can count on a Playoff berth. Get the full lowdown on the victory here. 2. Louis Oosthuizen’s runner-up list is getting near comical. The South African set the clubhouse lead on Sunday only to see Champ better him by two shots, relegating Oosthuizen to a fifth top-3 finish in his last seven starts on the PGA TOUR. Unlike The Open, where Oosthuizen couldn’t get it going Sunday, he pushed hard to the end, making three birdies in the final four holes. Since losing in a playoff at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, Oosthuizen has finished T8 (Valspar Championship), T2 (PGA Championship), T18 (the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide), 2nd (U.S. Open), T3 (The Open Championship), and T2 (3M Open). It means four of his 12 career TOUR runner-up finishes have come during this stretch. Incredibly, Oosthuizen now sits sixth in the FedExCup without a victory. “I was happy to play this week. I sort of didn’t really want to just think about last week, about not playing great on that Sunday and immediately quickly go back into tournament mode and then play this tournament,” Oosthuizen said. “We had a good time here this week and I’m just trying to see if I can go one better than all these seconds and thirds.” 3. Vegas and Pereira head to Tokyo in nice form. Jhonattan Vegas will head to the Olympic Games fresh off a third career runner-up result on the PGA TOUR – funny enough they’ve all come this season. The Venezuelan was also second at the Puerto Rico Open and the Palmetto Championship at Congaree. “I had a dream start making three birdies in five holes, kind of got slowed down a little bit through the middle of the round, couldn’t really buy a putt,” Vegas said. “Gave myself a little bit of a chance at the end. But solid week, that’s all you want. You want to play good under pressure and feel like I did that. “(Tokyo), it’s super exciting. Like I’ve said before, we don’t really get to play for our countries that often and every chance you get a chance it means a lot, especially being Venezuelan. “Venezuela’s been going through extremely rough times lately. To be able to represent it and hopefully give the country a medal would be a dream come true.” Chile’s Mito Pereira is also ready to hold his own with teammate Joaquin Niemann in Japan after a second consecutive top-10 finish on TOUR. Pereira was T5 at the Barbasol Championship last week and T6 this week. 4. Cameron Tringale’s scars continue but they could help in future. The 54-hole leader is now 307 events into his TOUR career and has yet to win. But experience builds with every missed opportunity. This time around birdies on the 11th and 12th holes saw his 1-over front nine a forgotten annoyance as he pulled within one of the lead. But then a mental lapse of epic proportions proved costly. Tringale came up short in a bunker on the par-3 13th only to fail to hit the green from there. A third shot jumped a little but still left 15 feet for bogey. Inexplicably, Tringale three-putted from there for a triple bogey and the end of his challenge. He’d talked about having “tons of upside” and playing with “freedom” after the third round but he stiffened up Sunday and lost over 3.5 strokes to the field in putting. Still – he sits 39th in the FedExCup now and could yet have the last laugh if he can harness the lessons learned. 5. Horses for Courses to remember. Charl Schwartzel posted his second top-three finish in as many starts at the 3M Open (T3, 2020; T2, 2021) and he wasn’t alone showing a little course form to remember about next season when doing your fantasy picks. Fellow former International Team Presidents Cup player Adam Hadwin now also has top-10 finishes in both starts at the 3M Open (4th, 2019; T6, 2021). Schwartzel moved to 43rd in the FedExCup as the Playoffs approach and Hadwin made a very timely move from 120th to 107th to try to lock in his place in the post-season. On the other side of the coin, past 3M Open champions Matthew Wolff and Michael Thompson both settled at a tie for 39th this time around with Thompson still under pressure to find a Playoff spot now sitting 132nd in the points standings. Ryan Armour (117th) and Gary Woodland (119th) both played their way inside the Playoff zone. COMCAST BUSINESS TOUR TOP 10 The Comcast Business TOUR TOP 10 highlights and rewards the extraordinary level of play required to earn a spot in the TOP 10 at the conclusion of the FedExCup regular season. The competition will conclude prior to the FedExCup PLAYOFFS where the top 10 FedExCup points leaders will be recognized and awarded as the most elite in golf. Week after week, shot after shot, each event matters more than ever before. Who will finish in the Comcast Business TOUR TOP 10? Click here to follow the weekly action.

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CARNOUSTIE, Scotland — Jordan Spieth returned the Claret Jug on Monday. His bid to regain golf’s oldest title will begin at 4:58 a.m. ET on Thursday. Spieth will play alongside Justin Rose and Kiradech Aphibarnrat in one of the star-studded groups at Carnoustie.  The northern-most course in The Open’s rota also is the most difficult. “Car-Nastyâ€� rewards the game’s best players, though. Five of the seven winners here on the coast of the North Sea are in the World Golf Hall of Fame, and another Carnoustie champion, Padraig Harrington, seems a sure-fire inductee.  Here’s a closer look at some of the other groups that will draw the lion’s share of the eyeballs here in Scotland. (Note: FedExCup ranking in parentheses; all times Eastern; all groups start on No. 1). MORE: Watch live streaming coverage this week Phil Mickelson (8), Satoshi Kodaira (70), Rafa Cabrera Bello (64): Mickelson won this season’s World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship, his first win since hoisting the Claret Jug in 2013. Kodaira earned his first PGA TOUR victory at this year’s RBC heritage, while Cabrera Bello has three top-10s this season. Tee times: 3:03 a.m. on Thursday; 8:04 a.m. on Friday. Si Woo Kim (41), Webb Simpson (11), Nicola Hojgaard (NR): The past two PLAYERS champions are paired for the first two rounds at Carnoustie. Simpson won this year’s PLAYERS by four shots. It was his first victory since the 2013 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. They’re playing alongside Danish amateur Nicola Hojgaard. Tee time: 3:25 a.m. on Thursday; 8:26 a.m. on Friday. Justin Rose (4), Jordan Spieth (40), Kiradech Aphibarnrat (NR): Rose won earlier this season at another course dubbed Hogan’s Alley. He displayed impressive iron play in winning the Fort Worth Invitational at Colonial. He also won this season’s World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. Spieth will try to solve his putting woes at the event of his most recent PGA TOUR victory. Aphibarnrat recently accepted Special Temporary Membership on the PGA TOUR after finishing T5 in two World Golf Championships (Mexico Championship, Dell Technologies Match Play).  Tee times: 4:58 a.m. on Thursday; 9:59 a.m. on Friday. Jon Rahm (14), Rickie Fowler (16), Chris Wood (NR): This group features two of the top 20 players in the FedExCup, and two players hungry for their first major. Rahm won this season’s CareerBuilder Challenge. Fowler, the 2015 PLAYERS champion, has two runners-up this season (OHL Classic at Mayakoba, Masters). England’s Wood has two top-5 finishes at The Open. Tee times: 5:09 a.m. on Thursday; 10:10 a.m. on Friday. Louis Oosthuizen (75), Paul Casey (12), Patrick Reed (7): Reed rides a string of three consecutive top-four finishes in majors into The Open Championship. He finished second at last year’s PGA before winning the Masters and finishing fourth at the U.S. Open. Casey won this season’s Valspar Championship for his second PGA TOUR victory. Oosthuizen won the 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews and lost in a playoff to Zach Johnson when The Open returned there in 2015. Tee times: 5:20 a.m. on Thursday; 10:21 a.m. on Friday. Henrik Stenson (43), Tommy Fleetwood (32), Jimmy Walker (53): In 2016, Stenson added The Open Championship to a sterling resume that already included THE PLAYERS Championship and FedExCup. Fleetwood is coming off a runner-up at Shinnecock Hills that included a final-round 63, while Walker was runner-up at this year’s THE PLAYERS. Tee times: 7:31 a.m. on Thursday; 2:30 a.m. on Friday. Rory McIlroy (39), Marc Leishman (20), Thorbjorn Olesen (NR): McIlroy returns to a course where he won the Silver Medal as the low amateur. He was in third place after shooting 68 in the first round of the 2007 Open before finishing 42nd. McIlroy won The Open in 2014 and added the FedExCup two years later. He and Leishman represent the past two champions of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, as well. Leishman was part of the three-man playoff won by Zach Johnson in the 2015 Open at St. Andrews. Olesen is coming off a recent victory at the Italian Open.  Tee time: 7:53 a.m. on Thursday; 2:52 a.m. on Friday. Dustin Johnson (1), Alex Noren (31), Charley Hoffman (102): The FedExCup leader is playing with a Presidents Cup teammate and a potential Ryder Cup foe. Johnson has won twice this season, an eight-shot victory at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and six-shot win at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. He is coming off the disappointment of losing a four-shot lead at the halfway point of the U.S. Open, though. Noren is playing his first season as a PGA TOUR member. He was a runner-up in a playoff to Jason Day at the Farmers Insurance Open. He recently won the French Open. Tee times: 8:04 a.m. on Thursday; 3:03 a.m. on Friday. Justin Thomas (2), Francesco Molinari (27), Branden Grace (74): The reigning FedExCup champion is playing alongside one of the game’s hottest players and the man who shot a record-setting round last year at Royal Birkdale. Thomas is second in this season’s FedExCup standings thanks to wins at the CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES and The Honda Classic. Molinari has two wins and two runners-up in his past five starts, with a T25 at Shinnecock Hills sandwiched in between. He picked up his first PGA TOUR win at the Quicken Loans National before finishing second in last week’s John Deere Classic. Grace shot 62 in last year’s Open Championship, the lowest round in major championship history. Tee times: 8:26 a.m. on Thursday; 3:25 a.m. on Friday. Sergio Garcia (128), Bryson DeChambeau (6), Shubankar Sharma (NR): Garcia returns to the site of one of several heartbreaking finishes that preceded his win in last year’s Masters. He missed a 10-foot par putt on the final hole here in 2007 before losing a playoff to Harrington. Garcia needs some good results to avoid missing the FedExCup Playoffs for the first time. DeChambeau, who’s in the middle of a breakout season that includes a victory at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, withdrew from his title defense at last week’s John Deere Classic because of a shoulder injury. Sharma turned heads after holding the 54-hole lead at this year’s World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship. Tee times: 10:10 a.m. on Thursday; 5:09 a.m. on Friday. Ian Poulter (34), Cameron Smith (44), Brooks Koepka (13): Koepka, the first back-to-back U.S. Open champion in nearly three decades, will try to claim a different Open. He’s joined by England’s Poulter, who won this season’s Houston Open. Cameron Smith won last season’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans with Jonas Blixt. Tee times: 9:59 a.m. on Thursday; 4:58 a.m. on Friday. Tiger Woods (50), Hideki Matsuyama (81), Russell Knox (73): The local favorite will play alongside the 14-time major champion. Russell Knox, fresh off a victory at the Irish Open and runner-up at the French Open, is looking to become the first Scot to win The Open since Paul Lawrie won at Carnoustie in 1999. Knox’s Irish Open victory was his first since his dramatic win at the Travelers Championship in 2016. Carnoustie is the closest Open venue to his hometown of Inverness, which is three hours away. Woods, a three-time Open champion, has finished T7 and T12 in two Opens at Carnoustie, a course he has competed on since playing the Scottish Open as an amateur. Matsuyama, who has won five times over the previous four seasons, is in the midst of his first winless season since 2015. He won three times last season to finish eighth in the FedExCup. Tee times: 10:21 a.m. on Thursday; 5:20 a.m. Eastern on Friday.

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Richard McEvoy claimed his first European Tour win after 17 years and 285 tour events as a birdie on the final hole edged him to victory at the Porsche European Open in Germany.

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