Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour betting tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and frequent guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network dedicated to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2026 3M Open, which starts Thursday in Minnesota.
Soccer fans around the world have left the United States after six weeks of World Cup play, and golf just returned to America after leaving the country two weeks ago – moving outside of Minneapolis to Blaine, Minn., for the eighth edition of the 3M Open at the TPC Twin Cities.
This will be more casual, TPC-resort-style golf than what we’ve seen in Scotland and England recently. This week, we’re back on the streets with trees and water everywhere. TPC Twin Cities is an Arnold Palmer project created by a pair of Minnesota natives, Tom Lehman and Tim Herron, in 2018 before the course opens on Tour the following season. The fairways are wide and the rough isn’t particularly fine but with water hazards sitting on 15 of the 18 holes, there’s something to be said for tee accuracy.
Looking at the past champions of this event, Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and Total Driving are the ones that jump out at me. Kurt Kitayama is your defending champion. Matt Wolff won the first 3M Open and Bryson DeChambeau finished second. Tony Finau won here, as did Cameron Champ and Jonathan Vegas. If someone is going to enter a team competition to work off the tee, that might be your Hall of Fame program.
Yes, I also looked at Strokes Gained: Approach. The greens here are fast, the Bentgrass is higher and larger than average size. Hitting the greens in regulation isn’t too difficult on this course but players will need to get a hot putter, make plenty of birdies, and separate themselves on the 11 par 4s on this par-71 layout that measures over 7,400 yards.
Players have said that this golf course reminds them of PGA National, where they play the Cognizant Classic, and that’s understandable since Total Driving is also a factor there, along with a large number of water hazards. I believe two other courses we see regularly in the Midwest are also as reasonable as possible: TPC Deere Run (John Deere Classic) and Detroit Golf Club (Rocket Classic). Finally, I looked at a few other heavy courses where we see similar strong fields, such as Silverado in Napa (Procore Championship) and El Cardonal in Diamante, home of the World Wide Technologies Championship in Los Cabos, Mexico.
And it’s about that time of the season when participation in the FedEx Cup points table becomes a factor. This is one of only three tournaments left before we move on to the playoffs and only the top 70 players reach the postseason – so getting within that number is important to how things go for these players between now and next season.
For a little housekeeping, it’s been a rough ride here in the column this summer as far as finding multiple options to lead on Sunday, which ended up missing a winner. Eric Cole, Mac Meissner, and Ryan Gerard entered the final round at Colonial in first, second, and third place. Each had a leadoff stretch on Sunday and Cole ended up losing in the playoff game. Jackson Suber in Canada, Ben Kohles at John Deere, and once last week, Si Woo Kim at the Open Championship – each led the front nine on Sunday and none of them got us home. From Minnesota.
Jackson Suber (60-1)
I believe that he will win soon and I don’t want to be on the sidelines if he wins, so I also immerse myself in young up-and-comers. It was something last week in his first Open Championship to see him fight for victory. We noticed that he led the back nine on Sunday in Canada last month. He finished sixth at the John Deere and Rocket Classic and 11th at El Cardonal. In the last 24 rounds, Suber ranks 11th in Total Driving and seventh in Birdie of Better Percentage. Suber is currently 79th in the FedEx Cup standings.
Emiliano Grillo (70-1)
The Argentine veteran is one of the names that always appears at these events. He was 10th, third, and runner-up here in Minnesota, runner-up at the John Deere Classic, tied for eighth at PGA National, and won the Procore Championship in Napa, where he also finished fourth last season. Grillo has work to do as he is currently 109th in FedEx Cup points. In the last 24 rounds, he ranks 14th in Total Driving and 16th in SG: Par 4s.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout (75-1)
Another veteran Tour outsider is in the middle, sitting at 92 on the FedExCup points list. Bezuidenhout was 12th a few weeks ago at the John Deere Classic, where he also finished second. Unfortunately, off the tee is not the South African’s strong suit but he is very good on his approach, ranked 16th in the field in the last 24 rounds, and has a very short game. He is seventh in the field in SG: Par 4s.
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Michael Brennan (85-1)
The American player who hit the mark was one of the first players that came to mind when he started to sink into this difficulty. In the last 24 rounds, he ranks 31st in the field in Total Driving and is No. 1 in SG: Off the Tee. He’s been playing well, finishing sixth at the Colonial at the end of May and since then, Brennan has made four straight cuts – at the US Open, John Deere Classic, Scottish Open, and last week at Royal Birkdale. He’s never even been on Tour and already won the Black Desert Classic in Utah last fall.
Gary Woodland (90-1)
One of the OG golf ball drivers still doing their best. Woodland, of course, won in Houston earlier this season at Driver-heavy Memorial Park. He ranks sixth in the field in SG: Off the Tee over the last 24 rounds and is fifth in Total Driving. He’s finished 11th and 20th here at the 3M Open, tied for 19th at Silverado, and has four top-10 finishes at PGA National, including a runner-up finish in 2017.
