Golf expert Ben Coley is backing Michael Thorbjornsen for the second start in succession in this week’s 3M Open.
Golf betting tips: 3M Open
3pts e.w. Michael Thorbjornsen at 35/1 (Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
2pts e.w. Keith Mitchell at 40/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
1pt e.w. Gary Woodland at 90/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
1pt e.w. Thomas Rosenmueller at 200/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. David Ford at 325/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
We’re a long way from Portrush for this week’s PGA Tour event, the 3M Open, but there will be a real sense of urgency even if the prize here is far less significant. Whether you’re Tony Finau looking to launch a late bid for the Ryder Cup, or you’re one of the dozens in need of a big points haul in order to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs, virtually everyone here has something beyond silverware to play for.
Sam Burns is likely an exception, his place at Bethpage seemingly assured, and having hit the ball well on all three previous starts at TPC Twin Cities, no wonder he’s the 16/1 favourite. That could look a good price absent of anyone else guaranteed to be playing in the Ryder Cup and, as he so often does, Burns has found form this summer. He should’ve stolen the Canadian Open and this is a nice chance to put that right.
Twin Cities isn’t extreme in terms of what it demands but it’s long enough and driver can unlock the best scoring opportunities. “This is a golf course where you have to drive it well. If you can drive it well out here, you can give yourself a lot of good chances,” said 2024 champion Jhonattan Vegas and he’s neither alone nor outlandish in that statement: the last three winners ranked first, fifth and first in total driving.
With Cameron Champ, Tony Finau and Matthew Wolff also on the roll-of-honour, Bryson DeChambeau second to the latter and Champ chased home by a string of big hitters, length probably just wins the argument over accuracy. However, that above-average precision from the tee helped to elevate Finau and Vegas, as it did Lee Hodges between them, and wild won’t do around a course well-guarded by water hazards.
For the second event running, MICHAEL THORBJORNSEN tops my shortlist and unlike the ISCO Championship, we’re not having to play educated guesswork where the golf course is concerned.
That’s not to say the course was a major issue in Kentucky, but it was firm and extremely penal and in the end, the difference between a creditable 14th and a crack at the title was the three double-bogeys and one triple-bogey Thorbjornsen ran up during the course of the week.
Third in birdies and first again in strokes-gained off-the-tee, Thorbjornsen’s good golf was very good and having gone 4-21-14 since briefly contending for the PGA Championship in May, this former amateur stud really is fulfilling his potential at rapid pace.
Second in total driving and sixth in strokes-gained off-the-tee, he’s not only enormously powerful but well above average when it comes to accuracy, which in turn is why he ranks fourth in greens in regulation. Around here, finding what are big targets and avoiding that ruinous approach shot is half of the battle and Thorbjornsen is well equipped to win it.
Last year saw him open with a round of 66 which had looked set to be lower, indeed he three-putted his final hole, but a costly 77 on Friday is a bit of a worry. However, his form had dipped since second in the John Deere and it looks considerably more solid now, while it’s encouraging that his approach play was very good throughout those 36 holes as his driver instead went missing on the Friday.
“It’s the best I’ve felt in I don’t know how long,” he said prior to the ISCO. “I just feel like I have control over the ball, which is the most important thing.” And if that feeling remains come Sunday, he should have a big chance to get off the mark on the PGA Tour.
Davis Thompson is an excellent driver who showed as much here in 2023 but didn’t do much else right at a time when he was struggling. I considered forgiving his Open missed cut and he’d been showing better signs in the run-up to it, but this has been a disappointing season and he folded tamely with the 54-hole lead in the John Deere Classic, meaning he’s still not bettered 10th since October.
He therefore looks short and I feel similarly about Kurt Kitayama, who was initially high on the shortlist. Kitayama is playing well, he was sixth here last year and he has correlating form at PGA National, a course Hodges in particular likes, but he’s an unreliable putter to put it mildly and in general not one to take short prices about, such is his propensity to go missing for a period.
Instead I’ll follow that Honda/Cognizant Classic path to find KEITH MITCHELL who, yes, could easily fit that description given to Kitayama.
However, he’s considerably more accurate off the tee, where he ranks 13th in both strokes-gained and total driving, and right now he’s putting much better. Mitchell has gained strokes in eight of his last 10 measured starts and despite a return to his worst at the Rocket Classic, is back close to average for the season after two better displays since.
That club has been the biggest issue from a statistical perspective but we all know by now that Mitchell is hard on himself, which to me feels like the only reason he’s not been able to follow up on his Honda Classic win back in 2017, when he beat world-class opponents in what looked like a coming-of-age performance.
He reminds me somewhat of Jordan Smith on the DP World Tour, only more fiery, but an event like this represents a good chance to shake the monkey off his back, and he’s a big price after a quieter run of form since his last top-10 finish, which came back in May in far better company at the Truist Championship.
The course is certainly a good fit, as he hinted at on debut with a second-round 66 before fading. In all five visits he’s started well (granted, he does that often) and having stayed on for fifth in 2021, he returned two years later to do the same thing. All told an adjusted scoring average of 69.5 puts him in the top 15 of those who’ve played here three times or more since the event’s inception six years ago.
What’s more, he’s shown a real affinity for these greens, averaging around three strokes better over the course of a tournament than he would currently. In 2019, 2021 and 2023 he actually produced three of the very best putting displays of his career, while in one of these he was also the leading driver, and more recently he’s been sharp around the greens despite that not typically being a strength.
In other words he’s done everything well here and it’s a great place to seal his spot in at least the first two Playoff events from 70th in the FedEx Cup standings.
GARY WOODLAND is just a little further down in 78th at the moment and he strikes me as a bit of a sleeper.
Woodland finished 11th on his debut in the 3M Open back in 2021, doing everything well despite arriving with form figures of MC-50-MC-MC including in the previous week’s Open Championship. On his next visit he missed the cut purely because of a badly misfiring short-game, then last year he produced his best result since March and second best of the season, finishing 37th despite holing nothing.
Woodland ranked second in strokes-gained approach and sixth in the tee-to-green stats that week and returns now with his irons having fired twice in his last three starts, and his putter showing plenty of positive signs. In fact, among his last eight measured starts he’s ranked first, second, 17th and 21st with that club, so the good has been plenty good enough.
With four top-10s to his name at PGA National and as a premiere ball-striker who has won around another risk-reward, tougher-than-it-seems TPC layout in Scottsdale, one which demands tee-to-green precision, I really like Woodland from a course perspective and I also don’t mind that he failed to qualify for last week’s Open Championship for the first time since 2013.
That might just help spark something and when last he did miss out he soon won in Reno, something I could see him repeating having generally looked in control of his golf ball lately. His only weakness is what he does when he misses a green, but having been third in that category last year I’ll take my chances.
Back up the betting, Max Homa’s price hasn’t drifted far enough to give him another chance after a somewhat encouraging effort at the Barracuda, while Tony Finau’s shoddy driving of late is too much of a worry despite his exceptional record in the event. Finau has performed here even when out of sorts but never has his long-game looked as far away upon arrival and too many trouble spots await.
I came closest to siding with Akshay Bhatia, whose total driving stats read particularly well of late, and underpinned his success in 2023 and 2024. However, the left-hander has been unable to put four rounds together since March, which he also failed to do in this event last year, and there’s not much juice in the price.
Luke Clanton’s putter has been the only thing holding him back lately but that goes down as an understatement and for now he has to be a watching brief only, so with a strong core of similarly strong drivers forming the top of this market but none of them standing out as value, I’m going to keep the squad at five players this week.
Ford focus
THOMAS ROSENMUELLER and DAVID FORD are preferred to Max McGreevy among those at bigger prices and complete the staking plan.
Where McGreevy is accurate off the tee and reasonably high up the driving stats as a result, Rosenmueller is a real powerhouse who ranks third in total driving and 16th in strokes-gained. Driver is his strength but with his iron play also solid, it’s not difficult to work out why he’s largely struggled during his rookie PGA Tour campaign.
But he’s started to score lately, something he puts down to a lot of time spent working on that troublesome short-game, and having been second at halfway in the ISCO he steadily improved throughout the Barracuda, played at a fiddly course where the first two home had exceptional records.
Rosenmueller might just find the Twin Cities is the most suitable course he’s played since making a solid start in Detroit a month ago and having grown in confidence since, it’s probably now or never as regards his slim hopes of making the Playoffs, given that Sedgefield Country Club is far less vulnerable to his prowess with driver.
Also of note is that his Korn Ferry Tour win came a year ago this week in Illinois, and I can see him featuring on the leaderboard just as he did two weeks ago.
As for Ford, he’s even more speculative but the talented left-hander, a graduate of the PGA Tour University programme, has gained strokes off the tee in every measured start this year and recently hit 26 of 28 fairways in the John Deere Classic. Had he played enough rounds to qualify, he’d be the PGA Tour leader in driving accuracy.
Ford isn’t short and would rank 73rd in distance which adds up to third in total driving, so that club seems to be his strongest and he therefore made some kind of appeal for that reason alone, along with his clear potential. That he played really nicely in the second round of the Scottish Open last week is the small push I was looking for but he is also a winner at PGA National for another potential boost.
Yes, that was as an amateur but he did shoot a six-under round at the Champion Course so we’ll take that smallest of hints and run with it, in an event where Wolff made his breakthrough with Collin Morikawa close behind. Ford hasn’t yet bedded in on the PGA Tour but he will and I want to be with him at massive odds given the need to drive it well around TPC Twin Cities.
Posted at 2000 BST on 21/07/25
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