3M Open 2022 Overview
All eyes return to the PGA Tour this week following The Open Championship last week in Scotland on the glorious St Andrews links. A 28/1 winner here pays the same as one at St Andrew’s so let’s hope we continue the momentum to the lesser established event in Minnesota.
Despite the field quality drop this week, we should still see some very exciting golf with lots of risk-reward par 4’s and birdies aplenty.
In 2000, the TPC Twin Cities debuted. In 2018, the Arnold Palmer layout underwent renovations that included relocating tee complexes, enlarging fairways, and adding 72 more bunkers. On the course, there are 27 water hazards, with 10 of them being playable from the tee. The water won’t scare these players though, they will be thinking about one thing when they stand on the tee box and that’s “make birdies”.
One of the easiest courses to drive is TPC Twin Cities, and in the inaugural competition, the average distance was well over 300 yards with an average fairways hit percentage of 65% which is high by PGA Tour standards. If players do miss these miss wide-open fairways, the course rating is among the ten hardest on the TOUR for hitting greens from the rough. Playing from the fairways will open up plenty of enticing looks at the pin, we can expect players to go low this week.
This week’s field has three OWGR top-25 players in Hideki Matsuyama, Tony Finau, and Sungjae Im. Each of these three players has had early success with a top-15 finish here. So we may assume they’ve agreed to compete because they view this as an opportunity to add another PGA TOUR triumph to their careers.
Let’s see if we can rack up an incredible and almost impossible 4 outright winners in a row, here is to trying
Key Skill Sets Required
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- SG Off The Tee – Accuracy is important here at TPC Twin Cities, however, most important is to gain strokes off the tee in general. Combining length and accuracy here will set up a plethora of birdie opportunities, which will be required to have any chance of lifting the trophy on Sunday evening.
- Driving Accuracy – TPC courses in general are friendly off the tee for the world’s best players. Hitting fairways here at TPC Twin Cities is of paramount importance, this is one of the hardest courses on tour for approach play from the rough.
- Par 4 Scoring – In low-scoring affairs like we can expect this week, players have to dominate the Par 4 holes, especially the short par 4 that are 350-400 yards in length. Some of these are drivable much like with saw at the Open Championship last week. Performance on these risk-reward holes will have a huge say on who lifts that trophy Sunday evening.
- Birdies or Better – Players are required to make a birdie 1 in 3 holes this week, without hitting 6/7 birdies a round, players have little chance of success come the back nine on Sunday.
- SG Putting – We have had 3 renewals of the 3M Open here at TPC Twin Cities and in 2 of those the Winner has ranked 1st in SG putting on the week. Without a doubt & putting is the most important factor this week. If players don’t rank in the top 10 for SG Putting, it’s highly unlikely they will be lifting the trophy on Sunday evening.
