2022 3M Open: Top 10 Power Rankings at TPC Twin Cities
From the Home of Golf to the home of Sticky Notes. After last week’s Open Championship in Scotland, a slew of PGA Tour players are heading back across the pond to the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota, just north of the Twin Cities.
It’s the fourth edition of the event. It’s bounced around July dates in its fledgling history, settling in as the third to last regular season event on the 2021-22 PGA Tour schedule.
The venue used to host PGA Tour Champions events and underwent renovations to be able to host a big-time event. It’s still a relatively easy course due to usually soft, lush conditions and generous fairways.
One of the par-71 course’s defenses is it’s long at 7,431 yards, making it favorable to bombers.
TPC Twin Cities’ main defense is water.
It comes in to play on 15 holes. There were 317 water balls at the 2021 3M Open, the most at a course last season on the PGA Tour.
A few important stats to watch this week are strokes gained off the tee, SG approach, and birdie-making.
Even though they’re man-made bodies of water, it makes sense that the land of 10,000 lakes would feature such challenges.
The 156-player field this week is understandably weak given the timing on the schedule. There are no top-10 players from the Official World Golf Ranking. No. 14 Hideki Matsuyama is the highest.
The weather forecast predicts a hot, humid week with some light to moderate wind. It’s been a fairly dry summer in Minnesota, but I’d still expect the usually lush course to remain that way.
Let’s get down to this week’s top 10:
Maverick McNealy was one of the best players left out of The Open Championship. He climbed up to world No. 70 after last week’s T-9th finish at the Barracuda Championship. McNealy’s peak in the Official World Golf Ranking is 67th.
Rounds of 11-8-7-4 in the modified Stableford format left him 13 shots off the pace. It was McNealy’s third top-20 in a row and eighth of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season. It could have been better if not for an uncharacteristic 5-over-par stretch in his last four holes where he was pushing to make a last-ditch run up the leaderboard.
The former Stanford standout still seeks his first PGA Tour win.
His closest call came last fall in his home state at the Fortinet Championship.
McNealy arrives at the 3M Open for the second time. He posted 67-67-68 to sit a shot off the lead heading into Sunday. A closing 73 dropped him down to T-16th on a bunched leaderboard. McNealy was fifth in the field in strokes gained tee to green on the week (8.393) and third in SG around the green (4.26).
This season, the 26-year-old is on pace to make his first Tour Championship appearance. He’s 18th in birdie average (4.12) and second in holes per eagle (83.3).
A once can’t-miss-kid hasn’t had the success many expected, but McNealy’s far from been a bust, either. He can begin to live up to his lofty potential with a win this week in Minnesota.