2023 3M Open Odds, Picks and Longshot Bets
Taking place half a world away from the just completed Open Championship, the 3M Open is in a peculiar spot on the PGA Tour calendar. On one hand, it’s the week after the year’s last major and that usually means most casual fans (and star players) take a breather before things ramp up for the FedEx Cup Playoffs in August.
But on the other hand, the 3M Open is one of the last opportunities for players on the playoff bubble (the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup Standings make it) to play their way into the three-leg competition.
Sungjae Im (+1400), Cameron Young (+1400), Tony Finau (+1600) and Hideki Matsuyama (+1600) are essentially co-favorites to win the event, and that tells you everything you need to know about this field, but the biggest story will be whether or not Justin Thomas (+2500) can find his game and vault himself into the top-70.
The fact that Thomas has the same outright odds as Sepp Straka gives you some indication on the kind of year it’s been for JT.
This is the fifth iteration of this event at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minn. and so far the 3M Open has been a place for longshots to thrive. Finau is the defending champion, but he’s really the only big name to crack the winner’s circle in the Gopher State.
2022: Tony Finau (-17)
2021: Cameron Champ (-15)
2020: Michael Thompson (-19)
2019: Matthew Wolff (-21)
The other thing that stands out from that leaderboard is that three of the four winners (Finau, Champ and Wolff) can hit the ball a mile off the tee. Distance is clearly a big advantage on this course, which shouldn’t present too stiff a challenge for this field of 156 players.
With that in mind, here are three long shots worth a punt at the 3M Open this week.
A solid driver of the golf ball, Kevin Yu turned some heads in February with a top-10 finish at Pebble Beach in February. Unfortunately, the native of Taiwan tore his meniscus soon thereafter and was forced to miss 20 weeks of play. But it’s been five tournaments since Yu has returned to action and his T6 showing at the John Deere -- another event that features a weak field playing on a TPC course -- showed the rust was gone. Yu, like any triple-digit longshot, is boom or bust, but he’s a solid driver of the ball and should fit well at TPC Twin Cities.
There aren’t going to be many players in this field who will outdrive Trevor Cone, but it’s not just his length off the tee that makes him a great play at a huge number. The 30-year-old is also in decent form even with a disappointing showing at last week’s Barracuda Championship. Cone finished T3 at the Barbasol the week before the Barracuda and has made five of his last six cuts.
Well past his salad days, Jimmy Walker’s name has popped up here and there on leaderboards throughout the year. The winner of the 2016 PGA Championship hasn’t contended for a win, but he was regularly scraping together top-25 finishes during the spring. Walker is still long off the tee and has shown he can still scrap, so I have no problem throwing a few bucks on him at this kind of number against this field.
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