Matthew Wolff looks like the new Jim Furyk on PGA Tour

With his run at this weekend’s 3M Open on the heels of being NCAA champion, Matthew Wolff is set to be a successful pro.

Scoring has been pretty good at the inaugural 3M Open just north of the Twin Cities this week, and the field has a good helping of unknowns. Matthew Wolff tied the course record at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota with a 62 on Saturday, which put him into a tie for the lead at -15 heading into Sunday’s final round.

Jim Furyk has had a successful PGA Tour career, with a major win (the 2003 U.S. Open) among 17 total tour wins. He shot a 58 during the final round of the 2016 Travelers Championship, setting a tour scoring record.

At his peak, as a nod to his unique swing and not standing out among his peers in categories like driving distance and putting, it was once said of Furyk that he’s not at the top of anything — except the money list. Indeed that was the case, as he finished top-seven on the tour in earnings eight times from 1997-2010. Other than a 2004 season shortened by wrist surgery, he never finished lower than 17th on the money list over that span.

Wolff just turned pro in June, after winning the 2019 NCAA individual championship for Oklahoma State in May. So he’s clearly a good player, with a bright future at 20 years old as he plays his fourth PGA Tour event this week.

In the wake of Tiger Woods, golf swings have become fairly cookie cutter and not particularly unique among pros to almost an assembly line level. Wolff breaks that mold, and he told The Oklahoman a collarbone injury created his unique swing.

"I broke my collarbone sophomore year of high school. When I came back … my coach George [Gankas], my swing coach, kind of said, ‘Your shoulder is aimed really far to the right.’ If I aimed my shoulders more left, I’d be aiming left and I’d miss it left. I would just hit it miles left. [He said] ‘Well, you need to find a way to open your shoulders up at address and at impact."

Heading into his pro debut at this year’s Travelers Championship, instructor Travis Fulton analyzed Wolff’s swing. Here’s a look

A lot of golf instructors will say the two most important positions in the golf swing are address (the beginning) and impact (the end). Wolff is not necessarily unique in either respect, which is ideal. But his takeaway from address is to the outside, with an upright club position at the top. He makes up for not getting to “parallel” with incredible shoulder turn and hip rotation (as Fulton noted, his left heel comes off the ground completely). The “shallowing out” of the club as he comes down creates an even longer swing path, which is the core of generating maximum club head speed.

Wolff moved into the lead by himself at -19 late in Sunday’s round, with a handful of others one or two shots back. Regardless of the final result, he will carry a fresh torch for golfers who don’t have a mechanically refined, technically perfect swing.