It took a while, but familiar names finally populate the 3M Open leaderboard

Several leaderboards at the 3M Open feature a first initial followed by a last name. One of those has been J. Bridgeman, the name that was at the top with a 8-under-par 63 after Thursday’s first round.

The one-liner was that it was surprising to see Junior Bridgeman in contention at this event, since he had been famous previously for his decade of contributions to the Milwaukee Bucks starting with the 1975-76 season.

This lame joke then required a check on Junior’s current status. He is 70 and made golf news in 2022 as part of the group that purchased Valhalla Club in Louisville, Ky., from the PGA of America.

Junior also has done well with other post-basketball investments and has an estimated wealth of $600 million.

Yeah, 600 very large ones, not bad for a player who never made more than $360,000 in an NBA season.

As for the actual golfer, Jacob Bridgeman is a 24-year-old PGA Tour rookie out of Clemson. This was his 23rd PGA Tour event and he slipped to a tie for 12th on Saturday with an 1-over-par 72 in the third round. He will be seeking a first top-10 finish on Sunday.

There aren’t many places where par cuts it on the PGA Tour, and that certainly is the case with TPC Twin Cities, even when the summer wind is blowing as it has over the second and third rounds.

There were also a Fishburn and a NeSmith among the leaders in Saturday’s early afternoon, but the former couldn’t have been the actor Laurence because the last name was a missing an E, and the latter couldn’t have been the Monkee because Michael Nesmith died in 2021.

The golfers were Patrick Fishburn, 32 and 117th in the FedEx Cup standings, and Matt NeSmith, 30 and 132nd in the standings. Matt did share second place last month in a tournament in Kentucky, so he’s surging.

The “Who’s this guy?” game started to lose steam for spectators gazing at the leaderboards as the afternoon progressed.

Eventually, there was a rousing bellow of “Kuuch” when the very familiar Matt Kuchar flipped it from in front of the 18th green for an eagle.

That put him at 15 under and momentarily in a tie for lead. This has been an awful year for the 46-year-old Kuchar, so that trademark crowd-pleasing smile was spontaneous this time.

Then along came an even better story — Jhonattan Vegas coming back from years of injuries with a fabulously solid 63 to take the lead at 16 under.

The player joining Kuchar and Vegas in Sunday’s final threesome will be Maverick McNealy, the No. 1 college player in the nation out of Stanford in 2015. He did Tiger Woods-type things in dominating in Palo Alto.

McNealy (14 under) made nine birdies Saturday and joined Vegas, Kuchar and Fishburn with 8-under 63s.

McNealy, 28, hasn’t won on the PGA Tour, quite a surprise to many after that amateur greatness. Explanation: “These guys are really good,” he said. “I was No. 1 in college. How many No. 1s in college are not out here now? Dozens …

“I’m a better player now than I was in college. I just shot 5 under and 8 under and I’ll have to be down in the 60s tomorrow to have a chance to win.”

McNealy and his wife, Maya, spent 38 hours in the Orlando airport, sleeping on the floor starting Saturday night on return from the British Open in their attempts to get to the Twin Cities.

Maverick’s father, Scott, and his partners did sell Sun Microsystems for $2 billion some years ago, and there’s said to be $900 million in the McNealy family. And Scott’s son and daughter-in-law were sleeping on an airport floor? That makes the Delta (and others) disaster even more impressive.

The second-to-last threesome Sunday includes Sahith Theegala, first at TPC Twin Cities in 2020 as a new pro and now one of the best players in the world.

Go ahead, attendees. The leaderboard no longer is such a puzzle.