Ben Coley's golf betting tips: 3M Open preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: 3M Open

2pts e.w. Jake Knapp at 33/1 (Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Corey Conners at 40/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Max Homa at 45/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)

0.75pt e.w. Matti Schmid at 100/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

0.75pt e.w. Billy Horschel at 125/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

0.75pt e.w. Tom Hoge at 125/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)

0.75pt e.w. Neal Shipley at 180/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

• In all above cases, General refers to Sky Bet, Paddy Power, and Betfair Sportsbook

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After two weeks in the UK it's off to Minnesota for a different kind of Open, the 3M Open, which shares very little in common with the two which preceded it. That being said, let's not understate the importance of this event and those that follow it for players who are fighting for their lives on the PGA Tour.

In fact, one of the surprise contenders in the Open, Jackson Suber, earned conditional status by the barest of margins because of what he did in similar tournaments this time last year and has since leapt high from that platform. It's little more than a year since Ryan Fox was winning the Myrtle Beach Classic, now he's a major champion. Aaron Rai played in that event before winning the PGA.

That isn't to mount a defence of the golf course, which is unremarkable. TPC Twin Cities is perhaps best known for its par-five 18th hole, where an enormous pond makes for high volatility, and a par-four 16th which looks too long on the scorecard to be driveable, but boasts a forward tee which tends to get a run out. Otherwise, what is there to say about these holes except that 15 of them feature some form of water hazard?

As for how it plays, there are mixed messages. Taking a broad view, there's plenty to suggest that plotting a course away from trouble is key, particularly as that trouble is of the most straightforwardly penal kind. But if what we're after is the winner then five of the seven champions are not just long but genuine powerhouses. Last year, Kurt Kitayama led home a parade of them, with Pieceson Coody and Jake Knapp among his closest pursuers.

Yes, Cameron Champ's victory owed as much to his putter, but this event began with Matt Wolff beating Bryson DeChambeau, its standout performance came from Tony Finau, and its most recent saw Kitayama add to a previous victory at Bay Hill. When Jhonattan Vegas won a year earlier, Max Greyserman ran him close. Lee Hodges and Michael Thompson appear to be the outliers, the latter having holed everything and Hodges having produced the performance of his life.

Hodges and Thompson might be of use in terms of how they connect this course with PGA National, home of the Cognizant Classic. Although more prone to strong winds and therefore much tougher scoring at times, that venue is known for its hazards. Bay Hill meanwhile combines elements of both and has a course (re)designer link through Arnold Palmer plus, well, a heck of a lot of water. This always adds volatility and the 3M Open, where the field is usually weak, has thrown up several big-priced winners.

All of this could be rendered moot by the surprise appearance of Scottie Scheffler, who has 'heard great things' about the event from somewhere. He's joined by his pal Tom Kim, one of several players with a more recent victory to their name, plus the likes of Hideki Matsuyama, Jake Knapp and the highly promising Jackson Koivun. Who knows what the future holds for the 3M Open, but if this is the end, it's a good one.

We had our fingers burned by Scheffler at the Travelers recently, when the world number one failed to convert his lead having traded a very short price, but the 3/1 was taken quickly by punters who expect him to take advantage of a drop in class. Scheffler is an exceptional golfer under any conditions, but when the examination asks a series of binary questions he's extremely hard to beat. His ability to miss in the right places and avoid the wrong ones is a big part of his edge and it's sharper here, in a grade he seldom visits.

Betting without Scheffler is always an option but the blend of travel and a volatile course he doesn't know makes him opposable and we'll do so first of all with JAKE KNAPP.

His return from injury hasn't gone to plan from a results perspective but successive missed cuts in the UK mean little in the context of a 3M Open, and the fact that his approach play has been electric can be considered a positive.

Long off the tee and typically an ace putter, Knapp endured a nightmare fortnight on links greens but can find solace returned to the USA, where before his troublesome thumb forced a break he'd been among the standout players of the season. In his first eight starts, Knapp only once finished worse than 11th and the improvement with his irons was as much a part of that as his fabled languid power.

With the thumb hopefully no longer an issue, we can look to his third place here last year as proof of his suitability. It came thanks to exceptional driving for the most part but Knapp also benefited from a very clear plan of attack, scaling back when he had to but relying on his biggest weapon when the opportunity arose.

That performance, which saw him open 64-65 without a bogey on the card, makes even more sense when you consider that he's been fourth and sixth at PGA National and he says it fits him well. Barring the fact that Scheffler has turned up, this could hardly be better set up for him to put behind him a tough two weeks playing a completely different version of the game.

On the subject of those who do arrive from England, the uncomfortable truth is it's impossible to know how each will cope with the travel. For some there will be a mental letdown, for others a sigh of relief. There will be those eager to push on into the final weeks of the season, and there will be those who would really rather be taking a break.

COREY CONNERS has no excuse to let his guard down though because after Fox's win he's now hanging onto the final automatic qualification spot for the Presidents Cup.

Hopefully inspired by a win for a player who will be his teammate if he makes it, Conners also happens to have found something lately. It's been a quiet campaign by his standards, not just because of the putter this time, but a return to his ball-striking best resulted in seventh at the Travelers, then he was 14th last week.

Only twice all year has Conners hit his approaches better than he did at Birkdale and while we must be wary of the fact that the bounce of the ball changes a lot, the control he exuded there is par for the course. Conners is, in a nutshell, an old-school ball-striker who hits fairways and greens for fun and is dangerous whenever his putter clicks.

We'll have to see whether it does here, but a golf course where much of the challenge is avoiding disaster is a good fit on paper and when he played it in 2019, he was fifth in the tee-to-green stats, first in ball-striking, despite having arrived in no sort of form whatsoever.

Returning after seven years away with his game in much better shape, Conners can call upon an excellent record at Bay Hill and we can hope that he's the latest in a string of bad putters to win this tournament. Not since 2020 has a champion arrived here with positive putting figures for the season and the most recent winners were all at sea before these flat, easy greens evidently helped.

Being up in Minnesota is no bad thing either and while winning has been a challenge for Conners, that is a clear theme at the head of this market. Among those immediately after Scheffler, only Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Kim and Conners have won multiple PGA Tour events. Conners meanwhile almost exclusively plays at a higher level, again notwithstanding the favourite.

Max appeal

Matsuyama made me think twice as he arrives on the back of successive top-20 finishes, the first in a Signature Event and the second in a major. Seventh here on debut and twice inside the top 10 of the tee-to-green stats in just three visits, if he drives the ball well he ought to be a threat and remember, he beat Scheffler to win the Hero Challenge in December.

Preference though is for one of the other multiple winners in this field, MAX HOMA.

He let us down a bit in the ISCO Championship last time out but from there Homa flew to the UK for another crack at the Open and a successful one too, finishing 28th thanks to a quality ball-striking display. His irons were as good as they've been in six months and once again the way he fought to make the cut clearly meant a lot to him.

Homa now gets back to the bread and butter of the PGA Tour where he's been showing plenty of good signs since reuniting with his old coach, Mark Blackburn. He flirted with the lead at times when 22nd at Colonial then 20th in Canada, saw it through to the end to be runner-up in the John Deere Classic, and while disappointing at the ISCO was still 39th at a course he was visiting for the first time.

He hasn't needed to keep the 3M Open on his schedule but we saw in 2020 that he can handle TPC Twin Cities, as he finished third despite a run of four missed cuts and a tie for 41st coming out of lockdown. That performance proved to be his best of the year and saw him rank fourth in the tee-to-green stats at a time when he was low on confidence.

Returning in 2025 with his game very much up and down, he finished a decent 39th thanks to more quality long-game numbers, and from three visits so far he averages 1.67 strokes-gained per round split roughly evenly across his driving, approach play, and work around the greens.

The idea that the course is a good one for him is supported by finishes of 20th and 13th on his last two visits to PGA National plus an excellent record at Bay Hill, where he has five top-25s in six, and as argued two weeks ago this is a class player on the way back to his best in my eyes.

Homa is narrowly preferred to Pierceson Coody, who was third last year thanks to an elite driving display but just hasn't been quite so good off the tee over the past few months. Coody is a big talent hinting at something good, including when making a fine start to the Open where he wound up alongside Homa. There's not much between them but I like the price on the six-time PGA Tour winner.

Michael Brennan is the sort of big-hitting, bad-putting player who somewhat fits the mould but woeful would better describe his recent exploits on the greens and there are similar worries relating to William Mouw, who was seventh here last year. Mouw was holing everything at the time and we'll have to see whether bathing his putter in hot water at the ISCO, as he did two weeks ago, has the transformative effect he's looking for.

At a bigger price, the outsider I've massively warmed to is BILLY HORSCHEL.

His irons have been red-hot since the Canadian Open, a run of four events undermined for the most part by issues elsewhere. Still, Horschel was a good 15th in Canada and his results since (MC-MC-MC) need contextualising, as he missed the cut by a single shot in two majors and shot 74-67 at a course not made for him in Scotland.

Horschel played this for the one and only time in 2023, when he was badly searching for something following a miserable summer which featured that teary interview at Muirfield Village. Horschel bombed out as defending champion there and was in a really bad place, but it was here in Minnesota that things started to turn.

He'd gone MC-43-MC-65-MC since the start of June but was right in the mix until fading late and his comments from back then could easily apply to the shape of his game three years down the line.

"I feel like I've been playing this way for the last month or so, I just haven't made, you know, the putts or got the momentum going," he said. "And I honestly didn't make a lot of putts today, I made one putt outside 15 feet and that was on two. Just played a really solid round of golf.

"Obviously it could have been better, but I'm pleased with the way the game's been trending the last month and I'm not shocked that I was able to play a quality round of golf today."

Horschel was due to return here in 2024, and the fact that he flew in following second place in the Open speaks to how much he enjoyed both the course and the event on his first try. Unfortunately, illness struck on the eve of the tournament and he was forced to withdraw, and he was injured last summer thus unable to get back here any sooner.

Hopefully his patience is rewarded and we see a return to the solid putting he displayed prior to Shinnecock, which really could be all it takes to make him a contender. That he has such an excellent record at PGA National has to rate another positive and I'm hopeful there's another title or two to come from this ever-popular veteran.

Another player who will be popular this week is TOM HOGE, who hails from North Dakota and talked about how comfortable he was back in this part of the US when fourth here in 2022.

"(It's) nice to be close to home again, that might have played a part in it, but I hit it really well, played the best I played all year," he said back then, despite having arrived on a run of missed cuts. Hoge had previously revealed that he played the course plenty as a junior, too, and that sense of familiarity must surely be in his favour.

This time he comes back having been 10th in the ISCO Championship last time out and prior to that, he'd climbed from 123rd after round one of the John Deere Classic to an eventual 33rd. Hoge has been playing well for two or three rounds for many months now, mixing it with Scheffler when sixth at the CJ Cup but for the most part just not quite piecing everything together.

Dropping down to an opposite event last time should've provided a bit of a jolt to this former Pebble Beach winner, who sensibly skipped the Corales Puntacana last week, and perhaps he could be one who benefits from arriving here fresh. He's certainly in good form, and as one of the best iron players in this field a decent week off the tee could make him a threat.

Hoge has been 20th and 23rd on other visits to the course so his top-five in 2022 isn't the only promise he's shown, and while not a player to trust implicitly, big prices are tempting enough.

Lucas Glover perhaps should've won the ISCO for us last time and led the field in strokes-gained tee-to-green there, just as he had in the John Deere Classic. His record here is largely poor but he played well on debut and is a former contender at PGA National who must have an each-way chance again, though memories from Kentucky are too raw for me and may be for him, too.

At the other end of the experience scale, Benjamin James was 15th in the ISCO then fourth last week and unlike those two events, he's played this one before. That was two years ago while at college and he showed a bit of something without making the weekend, so we should expect him to do better now returning as a professional.

Austin Smotherman has the required long-game but I prefer siding with MATTI SCHMID, another who comes here from Europe but in his case after a break following 23rd in Germany and 21st in Scotland.

Schmid has correlating form with finishes of 18th and ninth at PGA National and he has form here too, finishing 20th and 12th on his first two tries then down the field last summer. Those first two were the product of quality long-game numbers and in 12 rounds so far, he's broken par 11 times, averaging 68.5 despite one real shocker.

"I really enjoy this course, I've played well here a couple of times" he said last year and I'm drawn to the fact that ahead of each of them, he was out of form, badly so in 2023. In 2024 he'd gone 52-32-MC-57 but was inside the top 15 with a round to play, just as he had been on debut.

Last year's effort is the worst of the three but it was also the most promising, as he opened 63-68 to be right in the mix, and he returns after a couple of strong performances in Europe where his putter warmed back up.

Granted, it was disappointing that he faltered when in the mix on home soil three weeks ago but I won't hold that against him. Schmid's form is good, it's two months since he was fourth in a major championship, and he comes back to a course which suits. Prices around 100/1 look generally.

Finally, I have to throw a dart at NEAL SHIPLEY, who produced his best tee-to-green numbers of the season in the ISCO when I'd shortlisted him at 66/1.

He's now out at 175/1 or 200-plus with fewer places after missing the cut there thanks to some horror putting, but that club had been better in the John Deere, as it had been in the CJ Cup four starts prior to that, and I strongly believe this is a very good course for him.

Shipley is one of the very best drivers in the field, his approach play was electric last time out, and he did bag some valuable experience here when 37th two years ago. That was the product of top-20 rankings both off the tee and with his approaches and it would be fair to anticipate something similar this week.

He can't win if putting as he did in the ISCO but that sort of comment would've applied to almost every champion here. Shipley can keep out of trouble, set up some chances, and perhaps even take them on greens which have generally levelled the playing field.

Posted at 20:00 BST on 20/07/26

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