What to Watch For at the 3M Open

The biggest story on the PGA Tour this week is Justin Thomas.

With just two weeks remaining in the PGA Tour regular season, JT sits outside the top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings. As the Ryder Cup draws near, he has limited remaining opportunities to make the case for why he should be on the U.S. team.

There is no sugar-coating it: Thomas’s current form is bad. He has struggled with his putter all season, ranking 159th on tour in Strokes Gained: Putting. Typically a strength, even his iron play has suffered recently, evidenced by him losing strokes on approach play in four of his last five tournaments. He beat three total golfers in the U.S. Open at LACC and after an opening round 82 at Royal Liverpool, he beat just three players at the Open Championship.

Justin Thomas is a phenomenally talented golfer. But he has not been an elite one in 2023. Outside of a fourt-place finish at the Waste Management Open, he has only two other top 10s to his name this year, a T-10 at the Valspar Championship and a T-9 at the Travelers Championship. It is increasingly difficult to build the case for U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson to take JT to Rome, especially given the depth of talent on the American side.

So at the risk of being overdramatic, I think the next two weeks on the PGA Tour are sneakily some of the biggest weeks of Justin Thomas’s career. Potentially missing out on the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the Ryder Cup would be massive disappointments for the 30-year-old two-time major winner.

I am eager to watch Thomas regain his form and start picking apart golf courses again with his irons. That said, I don’t expect it to happen this week in Minnesota. He’s listed between 20/1 and 25/1 in most sportsbooks, and you’d be crazy to bet him at that number, in my opinion.

But the beauty of golf is that JT could surprise everyone this week. He could conjure some magic, stuff a bunch of wedge shots to three feet, and remind everyone why they’d be fools to leave him off that chartered plane headed for Italy. Barring some extremely impressive performances over the next few weeks, however, Zach Johnson should be prepared to do just that.