Course Preview and Fits: 3M Open

The Tour returns stateside this week for the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minn., the third-to-last regular-season event before the playoffs. The field is thin at the top, with one enormous exception. Scottie Scheffler committed to this event months ago and is the only top-30 player in it, which makes him a heavy favorite. Kurt Kitayama defends after backing up a third-round 60 to beat Sam Stevens by one last year.

The Course:

TPC Twin Cities is an Arnold Palmer design playing as a par 71, listed anywhere from 7,220 to 7,431 yards depending on the setup. It opened as a private club and was converted to a TPC when the Tour arrived in 2019. The greens are bentgrass and the property is flat, open, and dotted with water. It plays well under par most years, the greens are receptive, the par 3s and par 4s grade among the softer sets on Tour, and the scores show it, with winning scores of -23 and -24 over the last two years.

The difference between TPC Twin Cities and the other summer birdie fests is that you can implode much faster here. Water is in play on 15 of the holes, with out of bounds scattered throughout the course as well. The data matches the eye test, with penalties, reload percentage, and the missed-fairway penalty all ranking top 15 on Tour. Most birdie fests allow you to spray it all over the place, but Twin Cities certainly does not. If you keep the ball in play, nearly every hole on the course becomes birdie-able. But start to spray the ball, and you are liable to eject from the event in a single hole. Twin Cities rewards the player who picks his moments and keeps his card clean, and it punishes the one who forces a shot that is not there or gets loose with their golf swing in the wrong places.