North Oaks native Frankie Capan III could take a massive step towards securing his PGA Tour card on Sunday. Capan is just one shot back of France’s Paul Barjon heading into the final round of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Memorial Health Championship in Springfield, Ill.
A top-two finish in the tournament would move Capan into the top 20 of the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-long standings. A win would vault Capan, who started this week 43rd in the standings, into the top 10. The top 30 in the points list at season’s end earn their PGA Tour card for 2024.
Capan is 19-under-par 194 through the first three rounds in Illinois. He followed up a 9-under round of 62 on Friday with a 64 on Saturday to move within one of tournament leader Paul Barjon, who is at 20 under. Capan will play in the final group Sunday.
“I feel good. Yeah, I’m excited,” Capan told reporters. “I was checking the leader board there kind of coming down the stretch, I wasn’t sure where anyone was at, but I think it’s important getting into that final group and just giving myself as many chances as you can. Looking forward to it.”
Thirteen players are within five shots of the lead heading into Sunday’s final round. But Capan has his nose ahead of most of them thanks to consecutive bogey-free rounds. Capan, who will also tee it up at the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities on a sponsor’s exemption at the end of this month, noted his game “just feels solid.”
He missed the 36-hole cut at the US Open in June, but said he’s been “touching up a few things” since then, and the results are revealing themselves.
“Once you get to this level and are playing all right, you really don’t need to overhaul anything or overthink things too much, but just little tweaks kind of here and there,” Capan said. “Yeah, things are kind of falling into place, so feeling really good.”
If anything, his takeaways from his US Open performance seemed to be positive. The 23-year-old hit balls on the range next to the likes of Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, and noted himself and many others, when at their best, have the ball-striking abilities to hang with the world’s best players .
“I think it’s all about consistency and putting yourself in the scoring. Like giving yourself more scoring opportunities throughout the round, I think, is one thing that’s important and kind of just managing your misses, and when you’re off, just kind of tightening everything up a little bit. I think that’s one thing I learned a lot,” Capan said. “Just playing in majors, there’s a lot of stuff that goes on off the course that you just kind of have to limit the distractions a little bit. That’s one thing I learned a lot as well. But overall just a great learning experience and excited for my next major.”
But first, he’s excited for a chance to earn his first Korn Ferry Tour title on Sunday. That would serve as another major feather in his cap during a rookie season that already features two other top-six finishes.
“I know if I keep sticking to my process and doing the right things and going about it the right way that everything will fall into place. And if it doesn’t, you always learn from failures. Yeah, just really looking forward to pegging it tomorrow morning,” Capan said. “(The mindset is) nothing crazy, kind of the same thing we’ve been doing the last couple days. I don’t know, just give ourselves as many chances as we can. Target lines, assuming the wind stays similar, it will be pretty similar target lines. I feel like it’s a course where you just want to give yourself as many chances as you can and see how many (putts) you can get to fall. You get on a roll, you get some momentum, you can make a lot of birdies. So it should be interesting tomorrow.
“I think it’s going to be a fun course to play in the hunt because things could change pretty fast with how many birdies you can make. But you still have to hit good shots, and it is possible to slip up. Like I said, excited to get going tomorrow.”