Golf Course Preview for PGA Betting: Scouting the 2024 3M Open

With the final Major Championship of the season officially in the rearview, the eyes and minds of the PGA Tour officially turn to the stretch run for the FedEx Cup. Two points-paying events remain in the regular season, and with only the top 70 in the season-long standings eligible for an invitation to Memphis, the pressure has officially reached a boiling point.

This week, we head to the Twin Cities for one of the season's most volatile layouts. With birdie chances and penalty areas paired together at virtually every turn, there may not be a week all season in which a few yards can make or break a charge at the season-long title. From up-and-coming talents lurking right on the bubble to a few marquee names jousting for future starting spots at Eastlake, one thing is for sure: these four days in the Twin Cities have the potential to shape the fates and fortunes of players on every possible front.

This piece will serve to break down every key trend and statistic I'm weighing to project a player's viability in the outright market and set our readers up to make the crucial decisions necessary on pre-week betting boards. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on TPC Twin Cities and the 2024 3M Open!

The Golf Course

TPC Twin Cities - Par 71; 7,431 yards

Past Champions

• 2023 - Lee Hodges (-24) over M. Laird, J.T. Poston & K. Streelman
• 2022 - Tony Finau (-17) over E. Grillo and S.J. Im
• 2021 - Cameron Champ (-15) over L. Oosthuizen, C. Schwartzel & J. Vegas
• 2020 - Michael Thompson (-19) over Adam Long
• 2019 - Matthew Wolff (-21) over C. Morikawa and B. DeChambeau

Twin Cities by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):

• Average Fairway Width -- 35.4 yards; 10th widest on the PGA Tour
• Average Driving Distance -- 292.5 yards; ninth highest on Tour
• Driving Accuracy -- 63.9%; 10th highest on Tour
• Missed Fairway Penalty -- 0.40; seventh highest on Tour
• Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee Difficulty: (+0.009); 13th easiest on Tour

The land of 10,000 lakes certainly lives up to its reputation this week, as TPC Twin Cities presents one of the more treacherous tests of golf we’ve seen in months on the PGA Tour schedule. 15 of the 18 holes here present some threat of water, and the 317 water balls collected by these 27 hazards two years ago were the most of any course on Tour.

As such, keeping the ball in play off the tee is absolutely paramount, but unlike some of the other more waterlogged courses we visit on a regular basis (PGA National, Sawgrass, etc), TPC Twin Cities gives these players some generous landing areas off the tee. At 35-40 yards wide on average, elite drivers of the ball will be incentivized to push the ball as far down the fairway as they dare aim, and with a rough penalty comparable to Detroit GC or TPC Craig Ranch, there isn’t much reason for players to shy away from bailing out if there is a “safe side.”

This combination of width and lack of stiff penalty outside of the hazards makes TPC Twin Cities a decidedly more driver-heavy course than your stereotypical hazardous Florida course. With a past champions list of Tony Finau, Cameron Champ, and Matthew Wolff, it is clear that length can provide a real advantage, but keep in mind that Adam Long, Sungjae Im, and Emiliano Grillo have both finished as runner-ups here over the last three years. I don’t believe any driving profile is out of consideration unless a player is particularly prone to spraying the ball off the tee.

Twin Cities by the Numbers (Approach):

• Green in Regulation Rate -- 72.2%; Seventh highest on the PGA Tour
• Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: (+0.022); eighth easiest on Tour
• Key Proximity Ranges:
  • 200+ yards (accounts for 22.7% of historical approach shots)
  • 175-200 yards (21.0%)
  • 150-175 yards (18.6%)

One players find themselves on dry land, however, the task at this week becomes much simpler, as the greens themselves at TPC Twin Cities are some of the most benign on the PGA Tour. Flat, receptive, and measuring ~6,500 square feet on average, players will have ample opportunities to attack on approach.

In fact, TPC Twin Cities has ranked in the bottom five in Strokes Gained: Approach difficulty in three of its five renditions and conceded the third-highest GIR percentage on Tour last season (74.3%). This mark is made even more incredible when you consider the clubs most players project to have coming into these greens, as with four Par 3's all measuring over 175 yards, five Par 4's measuring over 450, and three very reachable Par 5's, Twin Cities isn't nearly the wide-open wedge-fest we tend to see populate the top of the GIR ranks.

Instead, we project players to hit nearly 50% of their approach shots from beyond 175 yards, and looking back at recent Strokes Gained leaderboards, it's clear that this share of long irons has allowed the cream to rise to the top. From Tony Finau to Emiliano Grillo, Louis Oosthuizen, Matthew Wolff, and Collin Morikawa, the 3M Open's most prolific performers have done so on the back of elite iron play. I'll be honing in particularly closely on in-form approach players, as well as those who have proven most historically capable of creating birdie opportunities from 175 yards and beyond.

Twin Cities by the Numbers (Around the Greens):

• Scrambling Percentage -- 54.9%; 2.7% below Tour Average 
• Sand Save Difficulty -- (-0.035); seventh toughest on Tour
• Up-and-Down Difficulty (Fairway) -- (+0.023); 12th easiest on Tour
• Up-and-Down Difficulty (Rough) -- (+0.010); 16th toughest on Tour
• SG: Around the Green Difficulty: (+0.011); 14th easiest on Tour

With a green in regulation rate that routinely sits over 80% for the field's top ball-strikers, it's difficult to make a compelling case that short game has any discernable place in our weekly modeling. In fact, when if we take a look back through the historic leaderboards here in Minneapolis, we'd see more than a few instances of blatantly deficient short games finding their way toward the top of the pack.

Cameron Champ and Michael Thompson were able to win this event in back-to-back years (2020-21) whilst losing strokes around the greens, and eight other players in the five-year history of this event have managed to obtain top-five finishes despite rating out below field-average with their short games.

One argument in favor of around the green play this week is that Par 5 scoring remains one of the leading indicators to success this week -- a stat that does tend to skew towards players with strong short games. I will be using par five scoring as a small proxy for around-the-green play, but on the other 15 holes around TPC Twin Cities, I'd much rather lean into metrics that point me toward players more likely to be putting for birdie than scrambling for par.

Twin Cities by the Numbers (Putting):

• Average Green Size: 6,500 sq. feet
• Agronomy -- Bentgrass
• Stimpmeter: 12.5
• 3-Putt Percentage: 2.8% (0.2% below Tour Average)
• Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: (+0.013); second easiest on Tour

For as important as putting projects to be this week in the Twin Cities, the green complexes themselves this week are among the easiest to putt on the entire PGA Tour. Pure bentgrass greens are always some of the most player-friendly you’ll find in the world - particularly when they’re lacking in severe slope.

For reference, in 2023, TPC Twin Cities ranked in the bottom five in putting difficulty from inside 5 feet and from outside 15 feet while ranking inside the bottom 12 in putting difficulty from 5-15 feet in four of the previous five seasons. You should expect to see 15, 20, and 25-footers being poured in with regularity, and with the historic success of players like Cameron Champ, Doug Ghim, Lucas Glover, and Emiliano Grillo on these surfaces, you'd be excused for treating these benign complexes as a bit of a leveler between the haves and have nots within the PGA Tour's putting hierarchy.

Given the historic importance of putting in this event, I will be boosting the prospects of the field's most prolific putters (particularly on bentgrass). However, with the separation that can be gained from staying out of trouble from tee to green at TPC Twin Cities, I don't treat this week as nearly the same level of putting contest as the birdie parties we've seen in weeks past (Rocket Mortgage, John Deere Classic, etc.).

Key Stats Roundup (in order of importance):

• Approach Play: using both general metrics like SG: Approach/Birdie Chances Created, as well as more specialized stats to hone in on elite long iron play (specifically from 175 yards and beyond)
• Slight lean towards driving accuracy to me rather than distance, but TPC Twin Cities is far from a purely positional layout a la Harbour Town/River Highlands. Power off the tee can be a real asset so long as we're not spraying it wildly
• Birdie or Better Rate/Par 5 Scoring
• Bentgrass Putting

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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

The Sunday Shortlist

Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.

Tony Finau

🎯 Great shot by Tony Finau @FinauLegion

pic.twitter.com/mk8XuSBVun

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) May 17, 2024

Although Tony's ball-striking splits have made him a trendy pick to capture one of the game's marquee championships this summer, his recent history would tell us he's a far better investment at the depressed odds we're likely to see in a beleaguered field this week. Over the last two seasons, Tony has accrued four PGA Tour victories: one in a Fall Swing event at Memorial Park, one in Mexico's National Open -- which included just two players inside of the OWGR Top 50, and two right here in the Midwest in back-to-back weeks: running away with the 2022 3M Open and Rocket Mortgage Classic by a combined eight shots. His average odds over those four wins? 12.8/1.

This season, Finau comes into the Twin Cities in decidedly better form than two years ago: logging five straight top 20 finishes from the PGA Championship to the Travelers, including a third-place finish in last month's U.S. Open. In that time, Tony has lapped this field with his iron play, gaining an average of 5.2 strokes per tournament on Approach -- beating the next best approach player in this field, Keith Mitchell, by nearly two shots per start.

Finau also holds a decided advantage when we hone in specifically on mid/long iron play from beyond 175 yards (a range that accounted for 48% of approach shots here last season). He ranks 2nd in my modeling in Weighted Proximity, and in five career starts here in Minneapolis, Tony has recorded two of the best five approach weeks of his entire career, averaging 5.0 shots per start with his iron play in that time.

Finau also leads this field in Par 5 scoring, he ranks inside the top 20 in Good Drive Percentage, and has gained strokes with both off-the-tee and on the greens here in the Twin Cities in four straight starts. As a past champion and the second-highest-ranked player in this field, we clearly won't be seeing much value in the Finau number this week. But if recent history is anything to go off of, these sub-20 prices are exactly the spots in which you want to target Big Tone.

Rico Hoey

Great eagle, better reaction.@RicoHoey is having fun @The_Cognizant. pic.twitter.com/21tYoyVCiY

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 1, 2024

Although we've had a few wins-by-proxy with the likes of Jason Day and J.J. Spaun in my lifetime, perhaps nobody in the history of the sport has come closer to capturing the Philippines' first PGA Tour title than Richard "Rico" Hoey. The Manila-native has found himself on a heater as the calendar has flipped into the summer months: logging finishes of sixth, second, and eighth in three of his last four starts.

An alumni of Southern Cal, Rico has long been known for his elite driving prowess: even earning the nickname "WGD," or "World's Greatest Driver" from his teammates and coaches at USC. In his debut season on the sport's highest level, he's shown they weren't far off in their calculations: ranking inside the top eight on the PGA Tour this season in both Total Driving and Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee.

The driver has been an evergreen commodity throughout Rico's career, but it has been the developments in the rest of his game that have made him a regular sight on the first page of leaderboards this summer. In this four-stretch since the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Rico has gained an average of 3.15 shots to the field with his iron play, he ranks ninth in this field in Birdie Chances Created, and has gained strokes with his putter in five consecutive starts.

Notably, Rico's two best finishes on the Korn Ferry Tour last season came on bentgrass greens, including a win at Holston Hills Country Club in Knoxville. Perhaps, then, it shouldn't be a surprise that we're seeing a similar run of form through the PGA Tour's summer swing in the Midwest 14 months later. Sunday's haven't yet been kind enough to the 28-year-old to grant him his maiden victory at the top level, but there are few players in this field that should be coming in with his level of confidence. In a week with so much uncertainty between trans-Atlantic travel, varying barometers of recent field strengths, weather waves, and even styles of golf, I'm willing to ride the hot hand here at any price over 60-1.

If you read my articles @RotoBaller or listen to @TheTurnGolfPod I’ve been telling y’all it was #WinningSeason when golf came back! Shoutout to the entire @RotoBallerPGA squad and all you guys that support my work for all the ❤️ pic.twitter.com/07a4ynvbSU

— Joe Nicely (@JoeNicely) June 28, 2020

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