Dark Horse candidates for 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities

The PGA heads back to Minnesota, this time for the inaugural 3M Open. Let’s take a look at some of the golfers who could be great dark horse candidates this week.

Before we get into the dark horse picks, let me update you on the event that is going on this week. If you are thinking “wait a minute, hasn’t there been a 3M event for quite a while now?” like I was when I saw this on the schedule, you wouldn’t be wrong. You wouldn’t be exactly right though.

From 1993-2018, the event was actually called the 3M Championship, and it was a PGA Tour Champions event. Not only that, it was also held at the same course, TPC Twin Cities, from 2001-2018.

Now, the tournament has changed so that Minnesota is getting a stop on the PGA Tour. A good amount of top golfers are here, as you can see from the Pro Golf Now power rankings that were published earlier this week.

Before we get into this week’s dark horse picks, let’s check in with the golfers that were in last week’s article.

• Charley Hoffman – 60/1 – Cut – 69-72. Just barely missed the cut by one stroke.
• Keith Mitchell – 75/1 – Cut – 71-71 wasn’t enough, five bogeys keeping him below the cut.
• Jimmy Walker – 80/1 – T-21st – A strong finish of 66 jumped Walker up the leaderboard.
• Corey Conners – 100/1 – Cut – 73-69. +1 on Day One was too much to overcome.
• Brian Stuard – 150/1 – T-5th – Solid week for the hometown boy, shooting 66-72-65-68.

Not a bad week, as those who took advantage of Stuard would have made enough to cover any other investments they made. The low scores that everyone was putting up made shooting -3 through two days, which is normally good enough to be sitting pretty after Fridays, not quite enough at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

This week, we look to get the majority of the dark horse golfers to make the cut. It’s another week at a new course, so finding those who have played well here in the past is a little out of the question.

The cut, for dark horse considerations at least, is going to be 45-1. That means that there are 16 golfers that are exempt from our list. Let’s get started and see who is worth keeping an eye on as a dark horse at the inaugural 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities.