3M Open 2026 Predictions: Contenders, Players to Watch and a TPC Twin Cities Course Guide
Update log (1)
- — Published on Thursday with Round 1 under way. No scores from the opening round are used anywhere in this article.
- World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is making his 3M Open debut at around +265, on a course he has never played. The next name on the board is roughly +1900.
- TPC Twin Cities is not a hard course. It is a dangerous one: water is in play on 15 of 18 holes, and it ranks among the top five on Tour for penalty strokes per round.
- Every winner but one has reached at least 17 under, and six of the seven editions were decided by three shots or fewer. Expect a compressed leaderboard.
- This is the 32nd of 34 regular-season events. Everyone outside the FedExCup top 70 has two weeks left to fix it, which is why the field is deeper than the purse suggests.
The 3M Open runs 23–26 July 2026 at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota, and it has the strangest field it has ever had: world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, playing this tournament for the first time in his career, in a $8.8 million event a week after the final major of the season.
He opened around +265. The next name on the board is roughly +1900.
That gap is the whole story of the week — and the interesting question is not whether Scheffler is the best player here, because he obviously is. It is whether this particular golf course is the one where being the best player matters least.
Round 1 began Thursday morning. No scores from it are used anywhere below.
The number that explains this tournament
Look at what it has taken to win here.
Every winner but one has reached at least 17 under par. The average winning score across seven editions is 19.4 under. Lee Hodges won at 24 under. Kurt Kitayama won at 23 under last year — and won by one.
Now look at the right-hand column. Six of the seven editions were decided by three shots or fewer, and four by a single shot. The one blowout, Hodges’ seven-shot win in 2023, is the exception that proves the rule.
Put those two facts together and you get the defining feature of the 3M Open: the field all scores, so nobody separates. Everyone makes birdies. Almost nobody makes enough of them to run away. Seven editions have produced seven different winners — no one has ever won this tournament twice.
That is the environment Scheffler is walking into, and it is close to the least favourable one for a dominant player. His edge is largest when a course punishes the field and he survives it. Here, the field does not get punished. It gets a wedge in its hands and a chance to make four.
The basics
What TPC Twin Cities actually asks of you
This is the part most previews get backwards. TPC Twin Cities has historically ranked as one of the easier courses on the PGA Tour — in some seasons among the five easiest. It is not a brute.
What it is, is wet. Water is in play on 15 of the 18 holes, and the course has ranked among the top five of 40 venues for penalty strokes per round — as high as second in a recent season. Arnold Palmer routed it through 27 bodies of water, and the closing par 5 has a lake down the entire right side that is live off the tee and again on any approach played at the green in two.
So the danger is not difficulty. The danger is variance. A player can make six birdies and still lose three shots to the field in ten seconds.
Everything else about the course is generous:
| TPC Twin Cities | PGA Tour average | |
|---|---|---|
| Greens in regulation | 72.7% | 65.6% |
| Driving distance | 291 yards | 282 yards |
| Driving accuracy | 63.7% | 62% |
| Fairway width | ~35 yards (14th widest on Tour) | — |
| Greens | Bent, ~6,500 sq ft, stimp 12 | — |
| Rough | 3–4 inches depending on the year | — |
Greens in regulation seven points above Tour average is an enormous gap. The field hits this golf course. Every one of the 18 holes has produced a birdie rate above 10%, and half of them above 20% — but 12 holes also carry bogey rates above 10%. Birdies everywhere, and trouble everywhere, on the same holes.
It is worth contrasting this with the other TPC the Tour visited a month ago. TPC River Highlands, host of the Travelers Championship, defends itself by being short — a par 70 of 6,844 yards that takes the driver out of your hands and asks for precision. TPC Twin Cities is 587 yards longer, hands the driver back, and defends itself with water instead. Same brand, opposite question.
Where the strokes actually come from
Two things fall out of that chart.
Ball-striking carries more weight here than it does on Tour — both off the tee and, especially, on approach. Nearly two-thirds of approach shots at this course are played from beyond 150 yards, and almost a quarter from 200 or more. That is mid- and long-iron golf, not wedge golf, despite the scoring.
And it is not a putting contest. Putting accounts for a smaller share of strokes gained here than it does almost anywhere, and the greens have ranked among the easiest on Tour to putt four years running. When everyone holes out at a similar rate, the putter stops being a separator.
A note on those numbers: two published compilations of the same statistic disagree slightly — one gives 19.4 / 37.9 / 12.4 / 30.3, the other 21.0 / 37.5 / 12.4 / 33.2. They agree on all four directions, which is what the argument rests on. We have used the internally consistent set and shown the other in the chart caption rather than picking silently.
Top contenders
Odds below are a 22–23 July snapshot and differ between books; where they diverged meaningfully we give the range.
Scottie Scheffler — around +265
The case for. He is the best ball-striker in the world, ranked first in the field over the last 36 rounds, at a course where ball-striking carries more of the load than usual. He was outstanding tee to green at Royal Birkdale last week on the way to a share of fourth. Top-five finishes in seven of his last ten starts. Whatever course fit means, this is it.
The case against, which is more interesting. He has one win all season — the Desert Classic, back in January. He was runner-up at the Masters, a shot behind Rory McIlroy. For a player of his standard, that is a year of being excellent without converting, and this is a format that punishes non-conversion: a compressed leaderboard where four shots covers twenty players is decided by who happens to hole a 20-footer on Sunday, and the putter is exactly the club he has not been separating with.
And he has never seen the place. On most courses that is worth very little. On a course with water on 15 holes, where the whole skill is knowing which lines are safe and which are only nearly safe, local knowledge is worth something real — and a good part of this field has been coming here for years.
Kurt Kitayama — +1900 to +2250
The defending champion, and he won at 23 under with a course-record 60 in the process. Nobody in the field has better recent evidence of being able to score here. The counter-argument is the one the history gives you: no one has ever defended this title, or won it twice at all.
Maverick McNealy — +2100 to +2350
The straightest read on the course-fit chart. Accurate, strong iron player, exactly the profile the strokes-gained mix rewards, and consistent enough to be around on Sunday. Not a birdie machine, which matters in a week where 20 under may be the number.
Hideki Matsuyama — +2500 to +2800
Elite approach player at an approach-heavy course. He is the classic profile for this venue, and at these odds is the pick that requires the least explaining.
Ryan Fox — around +2500
Won the Open Championship nine days ago at Royal Birkdale, at 10 under, a shot clear of Cameron Young. Whether that is a reason to back him or to fade him depends on how you read a player teeing it up in Minnesota a week after the biggest win of his life.
Also in the conversation
Keith Mitchell (~+2500), Jake Knapp (+2700), Jackson Koivun (+2800) and Tom Kim (+2900 to +3300) round out the shortened board. Kim arrives having won the Scottish Open and ranks fourth in the field for ball-striking over his last 36 rounds — a genuinely good fit that the odds have not fully caught.
Players to watch beyond the favourites
Johnny Keefer is the name worth knowing. He ranks second in the field in ball-striking over the last 36 rounds — directly behind Scheffler — with top-ten finishes at comparable ball-strikers’ venues, and he is priced around +5900. That is the widest gap between profile and price on the board.
Jordan Smith and Jackson Suber complete the top five ball-strikers in the field, and both are available at long odds.
There is also a family of courses whose results travel here: players who have done well at PGA National, TPC Deere Run and TPC Craig Ranch tend to show up at TPC Twin Cities. That points at Lucas Glover, Corey Conners and Doug Ghim — none of whom will be favourites, all of whom fit.
And watch the weather, or rather the lack of it. Thursday opened partly sunny, 82°F, with south-westerly wind at 5–10 mph. The forecast stays benign into Friday with rain only a possibility by Sunday. Calm, soft conditions at a course that already yields 20 under is a recipe for the low end of the scoring range, which favours the aggressive players over the steady ones — and shortens the odds on somebody outside the top ten of the board going very low for four days.
The subplot that makes this field deeper than the purse
This is the 32nd of 34 regular-season events. After the Rocket Classic and the Wyndham Championship, the FedExCup regular season closes and the field for the playoffs locks:
| Cut | Who advances |
|---|---|
| Top 70 | FedEx St. Jude Championship |
| Top 50 (after St. Jude) | BMW Championship |
| Top 30 | Tour Championship |
That is why an $8.8 million tournament in late July has 144 players in it who badly want to be there. The cut line runs directly through a group of very recognisable names — Brian Harman, Jason Day, Keegan Bradley, Mac Meissner, Lucas Glover, Michael Thorbjornsen and Jordan Smith are all clustered in the seventies of the standings, with two events left to move.
We are deliberately not telling you who is exactly 70th. That number changes with every shot struck this week, and previews published two days ago already listed a different name there. Watch the band, not the rank. If you want the live number, the PGA Tour’s own standings page is the only thing worth reading.
So who wins?
Taking a position, because a preview that refuses to is not worth reading.
Scheffler is the right favourite and the wrong price. Everything about his game fits this course. Nothing about this course lets him use the part of his game that makes him Scheffler — the ability to be two shots better than everyone when conditions are hard. At a benign, soft, birdie-soaked venue where the winner will likely need 20 under and where four of seven editions came down to one shot, he is being asked to win a coin-flip he happens to enter with a slight edge. Around +265 prices him as if this were a major.
The winner very likely comes from the elite ball-strikers, and very likely is not a household name. That is not a hedge — it is what seven editions of history say. Wolff, Thompson, Champ, Finau, Hodges, Vegas, Kitayama: one established Tour star, one 20-year-old playing a sponsor’s exemption in his third professional start, and five players from the middle of the ranking. This has been a tournament that produces first-time winners and one-shot finishes, and nothing about the course has changed.
What has changed is the top of the field, and that is genuinely new information rather than a pattern to extrapolate from — which is why this is a harder call than a major, where the U.S. Open leaderboard at Shinnecock sorted itself out over four days more or less the way the course intended.
Our read: Scheffler contends and probably finishes top five. If someone beats him, the profile is a top-five ball-striker with local reps who plays the four par 5s well and does not put a ball in the water — which describes Matsuyama and Kitayama among the fancied names and Johnny Keefer among the long ones.
And the single most useful thing to watch is not a leaderboard position. It is penalty strokes. On a course where 15 holes have water and the seven winners so far have beaten second place by an average of just over two shots, this tournament gets decided by who avoids the one wet ball that everyone else finds.
Frequently asked questions
When is the 3M Open 2026?
Thursday 23 July to Sunday 26 July 2026, at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota.
Who is the defending 3M Open champion?
Kurt Kitayama, who won in 2025 at 23 under par by a single shot, and shot a course-record 60 along the way.
How much is the 3M Open purse in 2026?
$8.8 million, with $1.58 million and 500 FedExCup points to the winner.
Is Scottie Scheffler playing the 3M Open?
Yes — and it is his first appearance in the tournament. He is the clear favourite at around +265.
What par is TPC Twin Cities and how long is it?
Par 71 at 7,431 yards. It is an Arnold Palmer design that opened in 2000, and water is in play on 15 of the 18 holes.
What is a typical winning score at the 3M Open?
High. The seven winning scores have ranged from 15 under to 24 under, averaging 19.4 under. Six of the seven tournaments were decided by three shots or fewer.
Why does the 3M Open matter in the FedExCup race?
It is the 32nd of 34 regular-season events. Only the top 70 in the FedExCup standings advance to the FedEx St. Jude Championship, so players outside that mark have this event, the Rocket Classic and the Wyndham Championship left to move.