Two weeks ago at the Travelers Championship, Sam Saunders had finally made a cut and snapped a streak of five straight missed weekends. He made the secondary cut, too, but then came a final-round 80, which dropped him to the bottom of the leaderboard. He brought home $14,400 and three measly FedExCup points.

Saunders said that’s the moment when he “hit rock bottom.”

“You don't want to play golf anymore,” said the 31-year-old Saunders. “It sounds so whiny because so many people would give anything to be playing on the PGA Tour, and I get that. It's a wonderful life and it's a wonderful career, but I was happy when I was with my wife and kids, I was happy when I was hanging out at the hotel and the house.

“The second I got to the golf course, I was pretty miserable. You just feel horrible out there and it's frustrating. You don't want to be playing bad golf and you certainly don't want to be playing bad golf in front of a bunch of people and cameras. It's just not fun.”

With no top-25s since a T-7 at the Barracuda Championship last summer, Saunders had dug himself a big hole in the FedExCup standings. He entered this week’s 3M Open at No. 188 on the points list.

But after two rounds at TPC Twin Cities, a course Saunders’ grandfather Arnold Palmer designed, Saunders finds himself at 10 under, just four back of leader Bryson DeChambeau.

Saunders’ second-round, 4-under 67 backed up an opening 65 as Saunders has seemed to re-discover his game and, most importantly, his passion.

“Sometimes you get text messages that say, ‘Hang in there,’” Saunders said, “and it's easy to look at those as frustrating and annoying. You don't want that, you know, cheerleading, but at the same time I try and look at the positive of all of it. I've got all these wonderful friends and people that I've met along the way that are genuinely pulling for me to do well out here. I'm trying to use that to inspire me to really grind out these last five weeks. 

“I feel good again. I feel normal, back to my happy self, smiling on the golf course.”

Saunders survived hitting his tee shot on the par-4 second out of bounds by making a momentum-saving bogey putt on the hole. He bogeyed the next hole, too, but birdied three of his next four to right the ship. Saunders has struck it well and made some putts, something that has been his Achilles heel for much of the season. However, his short game has been stellar so far this week.

The self-confidence has returned for Saunders. So, too, have the high expectations.

“I need to win, that's about the only thing that I'm going to be excited about,” Saunders said. “I guess solo second would lock up a job for next year, but I'm not thinking about it that way. I really just want to try and win a golf tournament.”

Nine years ago, Arjun Atwal won the 2010 Wyndham Championship and became the first Monday qualifier to win on the PGA Tour in 24 years.

Fast forward to this week’s 3M Open and the 46-year-old Atwal has a chance to repeat that feat.

“Feels like déjà vu,” said Atwal, after shooting 3-under 68 to climb to 9 under through two rounds at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minn.

Of course, Atwal was embellishing. He’s forgotten that version of himself. Before he shot 62 on Monday, Atwal has played just twice on the PGA Tour this season, both opposite-field events. He’s in danger of slipping out of the top 1,000 in the Official World Golf Ranking, too.

“I'm a lot older,” Atwal said. “Broken-down body. Haven't really played golf since March. Been battling a mid-back injury for some reason the last two months, so I'm just glad to be playing a tournament, you know?”

Yet Atwal finds himself in the thick of things at the 3M Open, where he is just five back of leader Bryson DeChambeau. He’s made more than 183 feet of putts through two rounds and has only failed to get up and down once in nine tries.

With a lack of distance, Atwal knows the rest of his game must continue to be lights-out if he wants to keep this odds-defying run going.

“I didn't expect anything this week,” Atwal said. “I figured if I play well and make the cut, it will be a good week for me. You know, looking at it, I'm hitting the ball really well. Starting Monday, when I shot that 62 over there at the Monday qualifier, it kind of gave me a little bit of confidence with what I'm doing, so hopefully I can just continue that.”

LAHINCH, Ireland – Zander Lombard shot a 3-under 67 on Friday to take a one-shot lead after two rounds of the Irish Open.

The 24-year-old South African, who hadn't made a cut since early March, found himself inspired at bumpy, quirky Lahinch on Ireland's West coast. He closed with three straight birdies in Thursday's opening round for a 64, and he followed it up Friday by playing the back nine in 3 under to post 9-under 131.

"I'm so comfortable on links golf," Lombard said. "It's never just a normal shot. It's always a little three-quarter, a little punch, judging the wind right. I've had great success on links golf in my amateur career."

Eddie Pepperell endured cool, rainy conditions early in his round to shoot 67 and was 8 under.

"I looked out the window when I woke up and it looked OK, and then the first probably six, seven holes were really quite tough and drizzly and it was hard to get a flight on the ball, and it was tough," Pepperell said. "We saw Lahinch probably a bit more the way we should see it today."

Abraham Ancer, Jorge Campillo and Lee Westwood were two shots back. Campillo shot 64, the low round of the day.

Padraig Harrington followed up his opening-round 63 with a 73 to fall to 4 under.

"It really was tough conditions," Harrington said. "You know, all my bogeys, like three of them were three-putts, the other two were chips from the edge of the greens, so I could have negated them with a good short game, and you need a good short game on a bad day, as it was."

The top three finishers inside the top 10 who have not already qualified for the British Open will earn spots in the field at Royal Portrush.

After missing his fourth cut in six starts Friday at the 3M Open, Phil Mickelson wasn’t very chatty.

“I don't know what to say,” said Mickelson, who shot 2-over 73 to slip to 5 over and book his early exit from TPC Twin Cities. “I'm just struggling a little bit at the moment, so I'll try to work it out.”

Mickelson now has just one finish better than T-40 in 12 starts since winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. The 49-year-old admittedly is “not playing really good golf right now” and has much to work on as he prepares for The Open in two weeks at Royal Portrush.

“Probably a lot,” Mickelson said when asked about the areas of his game that need improvement before the year’s final major. “I mean, there's all the little things, all the little nuances. Not hitting my short irons close enough, not putting very well, driving it a little bit erratic, so there's a lot of areas I can improve on.”

For much of the closing moments Friday, it appeared that Mickelson wouldn't be the only headliner to miss the cut at the inaugural 3M Open. World No. 1 Brooks Koepka tripled the par-5 18th to fall below the cut line before playing his second nine in 2 under to shoot 72 and get to 3 under. Jason Day was even par overall with three holes to play in his second round but birdied each of his final three holes to also finish at 3 under.

Both stars were right on the cut line as the second round neared its conclusion when a flurry of late birdies – and eagles (Bud Cauley eagled the 18th to move from 2 under to 4 under) – threatened to bump the cut line up to 4 under, and Joey Garber's two-putt birdie from 21 feet at No. 18 did the job.

However, Cameron Davis, playing in the last group off the back nine Friday, needed five shots to get up and down out of the back greenside bunker at the par-4 ninth, just 30 feet from the hole. His closing triple bogey dropped him from 5 under to 2 under. Davis missed the cut but also moved the 3-under group back above the cut line.

As a result, 85 players will play Saturday, including Koepka and Day – but not Mickelson. We'll see Lefty next in Northern Ireland.