Reusse: Spring Lake Park guy Troy Merritt flashes his — ahem — Iowa ties at the 3M Open

Troy Merritt was born in Osage, Iowa. The family moved to Idaho when he was 8 months old, and father Mark was hired as a teacher and the boys basketball coach in the town of Burley.

Then, in 2001, Dad took a sales job with Tilsner Carton Co. in St. Paul, and 15-year-old Troy wound up attending Spring Lake Park High School.

Troy was a standout golfer and also an all-conference guard for the first Spring Lake Park basketball team to earn a trip to a state boys basketball tournament. From there, he attended and played golf at Winona State for two years, then transferred to Boise State and found significant success in Division I golf.

And on Tuesday, as Merritt was the featured attraction for the First Tee clinic at the 3M Open in Blaine, we learned this about this about an athlete cultivated in Idaho and Minnesota:

It sure takes a lot to get the Hawkeye out of someone born into it, even if he relocated from Iowa as an infant.

Merritt was introduced to the young audience by Emma Carpenter, a standout golfer for the Gophers now launching a career in television sports — with PGA Tour Live and as a Big Ten sideline reporter for this fall.

Perhaps it was for the benefit of Carpenter and other Gophers faithful among the adults in the audience when Merritt offered this aside as he started talking with the First Tee youth:

The date that Cooper DeJean’s punt return for a winning TD vs. the Gophers was nullified by a replay official’s verdict that the Hawkeyes great had fulfilled the requirements for a fair catch was Oct. 21, 2023.

Yes, the complaints were endless, but et tú, Troy Merritt?

You haven’t resided in Iowa since being in a bassinet.

“All of my family is from the Dubuque area,” he said. “And they are all Hawkeye fans. I had no choice but to be a Hawkeye fan.”

Merritt arrived at Spring Lake Park High School as a sophomore in the fall of 2001, but the Gophers’ vibe was not strong enough to convert him.

“It looks quite a bit different,” Merritt said. “They must’ve done a lot of work on our school.”

Merritt had a strong senior golf season for the Panthers but was “recruited” only by MIAC schools. When he went to Winona State, he had to make the team in a tryout. He won 12 tournaments there in two seasons and was a D-II All-American as a sophomore.

He had been working summers at Oak Ridge Country Club in Hopkins. When the club reduced playing privileges for employees, he wanted rounds and was hooked up by an uncle for a summer job at SpurWing Country Club in Meridian, Idaho.

And the rest becomes a tale of some success and constant resiliency; of a family man now pushed into costly globe-trotting taking him away from his wife and two sons way too often.

Merritt had a great senior season at Boise State in 2008 and turned pro. He also met Courtney Achter, a gymnast for the Broncos. They were married and have two sons: Scout, 14, and Dodge, 11.

A year later, he finished 125th on the PGA Tour, the last spot to earn playing rights. He’s won twice on the Tour: beating Rickie Fowler by three strokes in 2015 in the Quicken Loans tournament, and the Barbasol by a stroke over Billy Horschel and others in 2018.

He lost the Rocket Mortgage event in the Detroit area in a playoff in 2021. That same year, he shared the lead with Fowler with opening 64s at the 3M Open. They both ended up down the leaderboard as long-hitting Cameron Champ won the tournament.

Four years later, the PGA Tour has changed greatly, with competition from LIV creating eight big-money “designated” tournaments for the top 70 players on the PGA Tour. At the same time, Merritt slipped to “conditional” status on the Tour in 2025 for the first time, which has caused him to do most of his playing on the DP Tour — the hybrid European Tour that has tournaments in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as Europe.

“DP” is a reference to Dubai Ports, which is where that Tour winds up.

“The designated tournaments have changed the PGA Tour tremendously,” said Merritt, 39. “I thought I’d be able to split time between the DP and the PGA Tour, but with conditional status, it’s very difficult to get in a weekly tournament.

“That’s what makes this week at the 3M Open great. Courtney and the boys are here. We were able to rent a house right near the course. Now all we need is for me to play well.”

Maybe the secret to doing that can be Merritt taking the advice he gave to the First Tee kids Tuesday morning.