3M Open betting guide: 5 picks our gambling expert loves this week

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted 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 gets underway on Thursday in Minnesota.

Soccer fans from around the world have left the United States after six wonderful weeks of World Cup action, and golf is just returning to America after having left the country for the last two weeks — touching down just outside of Minneapolis in Blaine, Minn., for the eighth edition of the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities.

This will be much more traditional, TPC-resort-style golf than what we have witnessed in Scotland and England recently. This week, we’re back to tree-lined fairways and water everywhere. TPC Twin Cities is an Arnold Palmer design that was tweaked by a couple of Minnesota natives, Tom Lehman and Tim Herron, in 2018 before the course made its Tour debut the following season. The fairways are fairly wide and the rough is not especially penal but with water hazards lurking on 15 of the 18 holes, there is something to be said about accuracy off the tee.

If we look at the past champions of this event, Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and Total Driving are what jump out at me. Kurt Kitayama is your defending champion. Matt Wolff won the inaugural 3M Open and Bryson DeChambeau finished runner-up. Tony Finau has won here, as has Cameron Champ and Jhonattan Vegas. If one was ever going to enter a team competition for work off the tee, that just might be your Hall of Fame roster.

Of course, I also looked at Strokes Gained: Approach. The greens here are fast, Bentgrass surfaces and they are bigger than average size. Hitting the greens in regulation is not terribly difficult at this course but players will need to find a hot putter, make a lot of birdies, and separate themselves on the 11 par 4s at this par-71 layout that measures more than 7,400 yards.

Players have stated that this golf course reminds them of PGA National, where they play the Cognizant Classic, and that is understandable with Total Driving also being a factor there, along with a great number of water hazards. I believe two other courses we see regularly that reside in the Midwest also make sense as possible comps: TPC Deere Run (John Deere Classic) and Detroit Golf Club (Rocket Classic). Finally, I looked at a couple of other driver-heavy courses where we see similar-strength fields, like Silverado in Napa (Procore Championship) and El Cardonal at Diamante, home to the World Wide Technologies Championship in Los Cabos, Mexico.

It is also about that time of the season when jockeying for position in the FedEx Cup points list becomes a factor. This is one of only three tournaments remaining before we hit the playoffs and only the top 70 players make it to the postseason — so getting inside that number is crucial for how things play out for these players between now and next season.

For a moment of housekeeping, it has been a pretty wild ride here for the column this summer as far as getting multiple selections to the lead on Sunday, only to eventually miss out on the outright winner. Eric Cole, Mac Meissner, and Ryan Gerard went into the final round at Colonial in first, second, and third place. Each had a piece of the lead on Sunday and Cole wound up losing in a playoff. Jackson Suber in Canada, Ben Kohles at the John Deere, and last week, Si Woo Kim at the Open Championship — each had the lead on the inward nine on Sunday and not one of them got home for us. On to Minnesota.

Jackson Suber (60-1)

I believe he is going to win soon and I don’t want to be on the sidelines when he does, so I am diving in again on the young up-and-comer. It was something last week in his Open Championship debut to see him contending for the win. We noted he led on the back nine on Sunday in Canada last month. He’s finished sixth at both the John Deere and Rocket Classic and 11th at El Cardonal. Over the last 24 rounds, Suber ranks 11th in this field for Total Driving and is seventh for Birdie of Better Percentage. Suber is currently 79th in the FedEx Cup standings.

Emiliano Grillo (70-1)

The veteran Argentinian is one of those names that always seems to pop up in these events. He’s been 10th, third, and runner-up here in Minnesota, runner-up twice at the John Deere Classic, as high as eighth at PGA National, and has won the Procore Championship in Napa, where he also finished fourth last season. Grillo has some work to do down the stretch as he is currently 109th in FedEx Cup points. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 14th in this field for Total Driving and is 16th for SG: Par 4s.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout (75-1)

Another Tour veteran that is on the outside looking in, sitting at 92 on the FedExCup points list. Bezuidenhout was 12th a few weeks ago at the John Deere Classic, a place where he too has finished runner-up. Unfortunately, off the tee is not the South African’s strong suit but he is excellent on approach, ranking 16th in this field over the last 24 rounds, and he possesses a tremendous short game. He is seventh in this field for SG: Par 4s.

Michael Brennan (85-1)

The big-hitting American was one of the first players that came to mind when beginning to dive into this handicap. Over the last 24-rounds, he is 31st in this field in Total Driving and is No. 1 for SG: Off the Tee. He’s been playing well, finishing sixth at Colonial at the end of May and then since, Brennan has made four straight cuts — at the U.S. Open, John Deere Classic, Scottish Open, and last week at Royal Birkdale. He hasn’t even been on Tour a year and he already has a win at the Black Desert Classic in Utah last fall.

Gary Woodland (90-1)

One of the OG drivers of the golf ball who is still getting it done with the best of them. Woodland, of course, won in Houston earlier this season at the driver-heavy Memorial Park. He ranks sixth in this field for 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, has been as high as 19th at Silverado, and has finished top 10 four times at PGA National, including a runner-up in 2017.