2022 3M Open Betting Picks Preview

Coming off a scintillating week at the 150th Open Championship, the PGA Tour heads back stateside for the inevitable post-major letdown and the 3M Open held at TPC Twin Cities. Designed by the legendary golfer and architect Arnold Palmer, the course was laid out on a 235-acre tract of property on the site of a former sod farm in the Minneapolis suburb of Blaine, Minnesota.

After two straight events on links-style courses, the 3M Open also signals a return to the familiar confines of parkland-style golf. At TPC Twin Cities, while low-scoring is the name of the game, there are still plenty of water hazards and thick rough to present a challenge to those who are not in good form. This course also contains numerous “risk-reward” holes which provides a level of excitement along with no lead being safe coming down the final stretch of holes.

The Field

As we head down the final stretch of the season and the typical weaker fields that come along with it, there is still a massive amount of FedEx Cup points on the line. Motivation becomes a real intangible this time of year as many players will be trying to either qualify or better their position with just three events remaining before the FedExCup Playoffs begin. Only the top 125 players in the standings qualify for the first event, the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

The week after a major tends to struggle to attract big names. For this week’s 3M Open, only five of the top-50 players in the world are in attendance. A small upper tier of players is headlined by Hideki Matsuyama, Tony Finau, and Sungjae Im. A small group will be making their way over from across the pond, including Cameron Tringale, Tom Hoge, Sahith Theegala, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, and J.T. Poston. Other notable players include Maverick McNealy, Davis Riley, and Adam Hadwin. Past PLAYERS Championship winners Rickie Fowler and Jason Day are also playing, as is defending champion, Cameron Champ.

Keys to Success

The overriding feature and defense of TPC Twin Cities is one of mankind’s most basic needs for survival – water. But for the 156 golfers teeing it up on Thursday, their main goal is to stay as far away from the wet stuff as possible. 27 lakes dot the 235-acre property, which includes 13 holes with direct water danger. With windy conditions in the forecast starting on Thursday afternoon, players who have the accuracy off the tee to keep their ball dry and who are strong ball-strikers with their irons to setup close birdie chances will have the best opportunity to survive the cut-line and propel themselves up the leaderboard over the weekend.

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The 3M Open is a perfect example of a wide-open week just oozing with volatility. Anytime a course has an easy hit rate of both fairways and greens, the gap between the best and worst players gets shrunk. Combine this easy scoring with a weak field and the threat of water danger everywhere, and you have the perfect setup for extreme randomness. Throw in forecasted winds gusting over 25 mph for a couple of rounds and you can see how there could easily be a longshot winner along with unexpected high finishes by lower-tier players. For me, this is a week to take a few more chances with outrights down the board and also to slightly limit my units on finishing position bets.

You also should not shy away from players who struggle around the green with their short game, as that will not have much impact this week. Last year’s winner, Cameron Champ was literally in the bottom-10 on Tour the week of leading into the 3M. He ended up leading the entire field in putting. This week, we have numerous players in the field who are excellent ball-strikers but horrible putters. Players like Brendan Steele, Emiliano Grillo, and Doug Ghim fit this category and make excellent Top-20/40 bets.

There are a few other data points to consider when choosing players this week that I have included in the model. One of which relates to all the water danger on the course, which mostly affects players off the tee (OTT). I gathered OTT data on every course on Tour going back to 2018 that had at least 8 holes with water directly in play. This gives some historical perspective on which players are more comfortable on these types of courses with a lot of water. That split was included in the OTT sub-model this week. Good Drive % is another vital stat because it measures the success of getting one’s approach shot to the green from any lie on the course. If a player ranks highly in that metric, there is a very good chance they are likely to stay out of the water.

Finally, course history and even recent form have proven to not be as correlated with success on this course or on easy courses in general. This week in the model, I have weighed long-term form (12 months) more heavily than recent form. The cream doesn’t always rise to the top. But in a very weak field such as this, strong long-term players like Tom Hoge or Jason Day (who both have very cheap odds) make for great buy-low bets this week. Also, players who thrive in easy-scoring conditions with weak fields make better plays than just looking at recent form. That metric has also been added to the model this week.

As for the course history angle, Matthew Wolff won here back in 2019 in only his fourth career start on Tour. 2020’s winner, Michael Thompson, finished dead last among cut-makers in 2019’s event. And last year’s winner Cameron Champ missed the cut in his only previous appearance at TPC Twin Cities. And you have probably heard it all week, but yes, each of the first three winners here at the 3M Open has had odds of 125-1 or longer. While I do not expect that trend to continue this year, I’m definitely staying away from the top-tier of players and instead starting around the 30-1 number for my outright selections.

Blaine, MN Weather Forecast (July 21-July 24)

Top 10 Most Important Stats

*In order of importance.

  • SG: APP
  • Total Driving
  • Opportunities Gained
  • Birdie or Better %
  • SG: OTT (Water courses)
  • Good Drive %
  • Proximity 175+ yards
  • SG: Putting (Bent)
  • Double Bogey Avoidance
  • SG: Easy Scoring/Weak Fields

The 3M Open Final Model

In each preview article and on Discord, I present my final model, which gives a detailed player ranking of the most important stats and splits for the week. My modeling is built around the PGA’s Strokes Gained data, which is divided into SG: Off the Tee (OTT), SG: Approach (APP), SG: Around the Green (ARG), and SG: Putting (P). Learn more about Strokes Gained and why it can be so useful in analyzing the past and predicting future performance. Many of the individual splits will be posted on my Twitter feed, with the final model exclusively published here for subscribers.

Outright Betting Selections

*Lines accurate at the time of publication.

Davis Riley +3000 (currently +2500)

Ranking 23rd in the FedExCup standings and coming off three weeks of rest, Riley will hope to continue his fantastic run as a Tour rookie. There is no doubting his talent. He has answered every call, from hard courses to easy courses and strong fields to weak fields. He ranks 15th tee to green over the past year and is top-10 in the field for ball-striking. While he has never played at TPC Twin Cities, he has been thriving at new courses all season. With seven consecutive made cuts and five-top 20 finishes during that span, he is trending towards a victory, perhaps more than anyone else in this field.

(0.66u) BetRivers

Sahith Theegala +3000 (currently +2500)

Like Riley, Theegala is another young player who is rapidly trending upward. He has gained off the tee in five straight events for the first time in his career, since The PLAYERS, he’s 12-for-12 in made cuts with three top-7s among six top-25s. His upside is enormous. He is top-25 in Birdie or Better, Opportunities Gained, and Bogey Avoidance. He has the length off the tee and is a very streaky putter. If fatigue isn’t an issue, he should be able to take advantage of a weaker field and put himself in a position to get his first Tour win.

(0.66u) FanDuel

Cameron Davis +3000 (currently +2500)

With 6th and 8th place finishes in his last two events and four top-10s in the last three months, Davis is a perfect fit for this course. He has been trending upwards off the tee and has the length to attack the longer par-4s and 5s. While he is prone to bogeys, he is a streaky birdie maker who is very aggressive with his approach play. He also loves putting on Bentgrass as he finishes as the sixth-best player overall in my putting model. His most recent Tour win was at Detroit Golf Club last year which is a comparable course to TPC Twin Cities.

(0.66u) DraftKings

Cameron Tringale +3500 (currently +2800)

Tringale has finishes of 3rd and 16th here with a course average of 68. He is the best in the field at avoiding double bogeys and is 5th in the long-term model. While he does rely on the short game, he has been trending upwards of late with a made cut in a top-notch Open Championship field and a sixth-place finish at the Scottish Open. He also ranks third on comparable courses and is also third on easy-scoring courses that contain weak fields.

(0.57u) BetRivers

Adam Long +4000 (currently +3500)

Long has turned into a top-25 machine with three consecutive and five in his last eight. He’s finished 25th and 2nd here the past two years and has a scoring average of 67.2 over his last six rounds here. One of the most consistent players in the field, he ranks in the top third of the field in every major stat category. He ranks eighth in long-term form and is seventh in scoring on easy courses with weak fields.

(0.50u) BetRivers

Other Outright Selections

Finishing Position Picks

Top 20

Top 40

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