A PGA Tour event in my backyard? Yes Please! The 3M Open takes place this week at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, MN.

My name is Josh Thomas, and I am a PGA and NFL Coach here at DFS Army! Welcome to the 2019 PGA Season! We here at DFS Army have got you covered this year for DFS golf with my weekly preview out on Sunday Nights, Chalk Donkey article breaking down the ownership projections, where to pivot, and GPP strategy out Tuesday Nights, and our Research Station that is full of more information Gthan you could ever need!

For the first time in DFS Golf history, the winner of an event wasn’t available to be played in four day classic contests. Nate Lashley was a late addition to the player pool when David Berganio pulled out on Wednesday and Draftkings didn’t get him in. He absolutely ran away with the tournament winning by a ridiculous 6 strokes at -25 over another late addition (who did get into the pool) Doc Redman. It’s been a long emotional road for Lashley after losing both his parents and girlfriend in a plane crash in college (heading home after they watched him play in a golf tournament) and I’m stoked to see him win.

It was a crazy birdie fest at Detroit Golf Club last week, but some of the big names really struggled with Dustin Johnson and Gary Woodland both missing the cut while relative no namers like Lashley, Redman, and Sepp Straka tore the course apart and I think we see more of the same this week at the 3M Open in Minnesota.

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Course Breakdown:

The 3M Open takes place this week at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota. It has hosted the 3M Championship since 2001 for the Champions Tour and this will be its first year hosting the PGA Tour. It is an Arnold Palmer design, and he was assisted in it by native Minnesotan Tom Lehman.

The course will play as a par 71 at roughly 7468 yards depending on the day. They have added some deeper tee boxes to the course to allow it to play longer than the 7100 it played for the Senior Tour. The greens and fairways are bentgrass while the rough is a standard Kentucky bluegrass which we see quite a bit in the midwest. It’ll be a bit of a change for players to get bentgrass after weeks on poa annua.

The Seniors played this course for the last 17 years and have continually crushed it. The lowest scoring average here in the last ten years has been -.9 and its been all the way to -2.59. Winning scores have been: -21, -20, -19, -18, -23, -17 the last few years. Kenny Perry has won here three times in that span. What do we know about Kenny? He bombs it. He doesn’t hit a ton of fairways. His irons are solid. and he makes a ton of birdies. I think that’s exactly the type of player we want to find for this week.

As you can see above from last years 3M Championship where the Seniors played, it’s a birdie fest. It almost always ranks as one of the easiest courses the Champions tour plays each year. The big change other than the lengthening will be hole number 3 playing as a par 4 instead of a par 5, but it still won’t be very difficult as it will only be at 500 yards. Only three par 5’s and they will play over 590 yards and two have some water in play. The 18th is a par 5 and will be an exciting hole to watch players finish on, and in fact, the tournament may come down to someone making an eagle there on Sunday.

The fairways are wide. Like REALLY wide. Some of the landing zones off the tee are 70 yards but on average it’s still 30-40 yards which are wider than tour average. They may have sneakily grown in some of the rough here but for the most part there its grip it and rip. Not only will the fairways be easy to hit, but some of the cross bunkering or rough in the run out areas will also be taken out of play completely due to the heavy amount of precipitation the Twin Cities has seen over the last few days (and will continue to see until the start of the tournament). The course is going to be wet, and players won’t get much run off their ball, which is another benefit for the longer hitters.

Not only are the fairways large, but the greens are also as they are some of the biggest they will play all year. And they are flat. This is Minnesota we don’t have many undulations to begin with but they are easy to read and we should see some guys drop some bombs.

The one thing this course does have a lot of is water (land of 10000 lakes!) and there are some definite forced carries and greens that are protected by water. Water is in play on 14 holes and we are going to see guys whose iron play is off, plunk them in the water and make a few big numbers. The water also comes into play off the tee, with it being a factor in tee shots on 6 holes. Players may actually club down a bit and if that’s the case they will have some longer iron shots into tees. That combined with three of the four par 3 plays playing over 200 yards makes me really want to target players who score on those long par 3’s in our research station.

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Some of the greens are heavily bunkered but it’s nothing crazy. We won’t see a lot of guys in the fairway bunkers unless they mess with the tee boxes.

There is rain in the forecast all week and its the midwest in the summertime. I would bet we have to start and stop a few times here this week with storms rolling through. If it does rain, we could see some soggy greens that you can just fire at pins.

I think guys are going to tear this course apart, similar to last week, maybe even more so than Detroit. If the wind picks up or plays a role maybe we see like a -19 but I think this could easily get -22.

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Key Stats:

Key Stats to look for this week – Birdies Gained, Long Par 5 Scoring, SG: Approach L25, SG: Off the Tee, Field Rank, and Projected Course Score.

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The Field:

In this section, I’ll cover who is in the field this week, the odds, any pricing discrepancies, and a few of my favorite plays on first look!

Another week on the PGA Tour with a new course and a fairly weak field. While we do have nine of the top 50 in the OWGR here, for the most part the strength of the field isn’t great.

Brooks Koepka leads the way here at 7-1 and after DJ burned everyone in a similar spot last week (and Brooks struggled at the Travelers) I think he will actually see these odds go down a bit by Thursday and would imagine he goes underowned in DFS despite looking like a great course fit.

We bet Hideki Matsuyama at longer odds last week in a similar field and while he performed he didn’t quite get it done. With the drop in price, I have a hard time going there in betting, but I think he makes a great DFS play again. I went all in, 100% owned on Deki last week and it paid off and I think I might end up being at the very least close to that again here.

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I never thought I’d see the day that Rory Sabbatini would be a top ten in odds and shorter than guys like Phil Mickelson yet here we are, and I actually kinda love the number this week. He’s so close to breaking through and the consistency is what is maybe the most impressive part of his game. He’s not just doing one thing well, he’s doing everything pretty well, including putting which has been a weakness over his career.

Sungjae Im, Daniel Berger, and Kevin Streelman are all similar stories as well, close to a breakthrough.

One angle to look at this week is the John Deere Classic. I think this is a similar sent up with fairways and greens being the same and the same sort of climate, that course could help us find a winner here. Kenny Perry has won the 3M Championship three times on the Champions Tour and is also a winner here. Paul Goydos holds the course record at both courses (59 at TPC Deer Run, 60 at TPC Twin Cities). The connections are definitely there between the two.

Despite last week being a scrub event and a scrub winning, I think this course sets itself up more for a big gun to win, so I’m going to be targetting the top of the leaderboard with maybe a few darts down low.

Beat the Bookie Betting Card:

Something new I’m adding each week to this article is my personal betting card for the week for Outrights, First Round Leaders, Top 5’s and Top 10’s. The real bread and butter with golf betting is a tournament and round matchups but I’m saving those for our Beat the Bookie VIPs!

As a rule, I typically don’t bet many outrights under +3500 unless its an extremely weak field (DJ at the FedEx St. Jude last year comes to mind) It’s just not a +EV most weeks when you think about 156 guys teeing it up. Hitting 3-4 outrights a year is a fantastic year for most golf bettors. The return on investment of hitting an outright at 50-1 can pay for a long dry spell (which is fairly typical in golf betting if you are only playing Outrights, FRLs, and T5/T10).

Current form being poor the last few weeks doesn’t get me off Tony Finau at this inflated number. He’s missed 3 cuts in a row which has led to him being priced down here at the same price as Viktor Hovland but I think this is the perfect get right course for him. He should be able to bomb driver off the tee and get his wedge game going. He’s so good between 100-150 yards and he should have quite a few of those into these large, flat greens. A return to bent grass greens will also be welcome as that’s far and away his best putting surface.

I made the case for how steady Rory Sabbatini has been this year earlier and think he makes quite a bit of sense as well. He’s so close with there top 6 finishes in his last five minutes, the breakthrough is coming and he’s a great par 5 and long par 3 scorer.

Sungjae Im is finally back to the top 25 machine he was earlier in the year and I think he’s ready to win here as well. His iron game is great and what let him down last week was actually his putter (which was hot in the previous two tournaments). Any time there’s a birdie fest his name has to be in the mix and with these gettable par 5’s, the PGA Tour leader in eagles is definitely in play.

Keith Mitchell is far too long given his talent level. He’s leveled off since the start of the year, but that has mainly been because of the tour’s trips to a bevy of courses with poa annua greens. This course has been described as the Honda Classic but easier. Guess who won the Honda Classic earlier this year? Keith Mitchell. Mitchell has also had success at TPC Deere Run which is a comp course, with a 7th place finish there last year.

Finally, another guy who has had some success at comp courses and is a stat darling, Sam Ryder. Ryder burned a bunch of us by missing the cut on the number last week, but what was lost in that was that he had an excellent round 2 shooting 68. Can he be this weeks’ Nate Lashley? If the stars align it could easily happen, he has the skill set, it’s just putting it together for four rounds.

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I’ll be playing T5 bets on Tony Finau and Rory Sabbatini when the odds come out and T10 bets on the rest. (T20 on Ryder since he is so long in odds).

I’ll have Head to Head and full tournament matchups posted for our Beat the Bookie VIPs on Wednesday. And there are some reaaaaly juicy ones this week! These are truly where you can make your money in golf betting, while not as sexy or as big as an outright win, they are much more profitable.

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Final Thoughts:

This is a fun week, at a brand new track and while the field isn’t great I think that actually puts us at an advantage. We will have content for you all through the week at DFS Army. Our research station and domination station optimizer will be updated on Tuesday and I will have my full Chalk Donkey article breaking down all the ownership and GPP strategy for our VIP’s on Wednesday afternoon! If you aren’t a VIP yet, use code UPNORTH for 20% off EVERY MONTH FOREVER!