DraftKings PGA DFS Picks: 3M Open Cash and GPP Strategy

3M OPEN

Purse: $8.8M
Winner's Share: $1.584M
FedEx Cup Points: 500 to the Winner
Location: Blaine, Minn.
Course: TPC Twin Cities
Yardage: 7,431
Par: 71
2025 winner: Kurt Kitayama

Tournament Preview

The state of Minnesota has been home to a lot of big golf tournaments through the years featuring the world's best players. U.S. Opens, PGA Championships, U.S. Amateurs, a Ryder Cup and even LPGA majors, including the Women's PGA Championship just last month. The Ryder Cup is coming back in 2029.

But all those events have been contested at famed Hazeltine National Golf Club, not TPC Twin Cities.

While the 3M Open isn't considered a big golf tournament, Scottie Scheffler is most surely a big-time golfer, the world's best. And so this week, the 3M Open will become a little bigger, simply because Scheffler is in the 144-man field for his tournament debut.

Tournament organizers were going to have another major winner to crow about, but Ryan Fox withdrew shortly after winning The Open on Sunday.

It may sound odd that Scheffler is playing this week, especially right after a major and late in the season. For all the cynics out there thinking he's playing just to pick off a win to end his six-month dry spell, think again. Scheffler committed to play way back at the beginning of May.

That said, Scheffler really could use a win in the worst way. And while there are a bunch of other good golfers on hand this week, this is might be the easiest field he has faced since he captured the Amex in January -- easiest but surely not easy. Because Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Kim, Maverick McNealy, Max Homa, Sungjae Im, Gary Woodland, Jason Day, Brian Harman, Corey Conners, 2022 winner Tony Finau and defending champion Kurt Kitayama are all entered.

Jordan Spieth also was an early commit -- and wouldn't that have been something for tournament organizers, snagging two of the top five draws in golf -- but he was not in the published field on Friday, just hours after crashing out of the Open Championship with a bad missed cut.

Some of the others in the field include Jackson Koivun, the former world No. 1 amateur who recently turned pro; Ben James, who also just turned pro; the new world No. 1 amateur Preston Stout, who tied for 15th at the John Deere; and rising Oklahoma senior Ryder Cowan, who led the U.S. Open for a brief spell on Thursday before tying Koivun for low amateur.

We'd also like to note that Aaron Wise is in the field. The 30-year-old was a promising player until being sidelined by mental health issues. But he is trying to come back and recently tied for third at the ISCO Championship before a T15 last week at Puntacana. As of Monday evening, there were only three pre-tournament media sessions scheduled: Scheffler, defending champion Kitayama and Wise.

TPC Twin Cities opened in 2000, an Arnold Palmer design with an assist from Minnesotan Tom Lehman, who further assisted with a renovation eight years ago in an effort to toughen the track for a new PGA Tour event.

Even though the course is long and has water on 15 holes (this is the Land of 10,000 Lakes, after all), the wind needs to be blowing to really thwart the golfers. The fairways are very wide -- more than 30 yards at the 300-, 325-, and 350-yard checkpoints. That lets the golfers fire at the bigger-than-average 6,500-square-foot bentgrass greens that will run about 12 on the Stimpmeter.

There are some super long holes: All three par-5s are 590+ yards, there are two par-4s more than 500 and three of the four par-3s are at least 200. There are 72 bunkers. The three hardest holes last year were the 502-yard 9th, the 468-yard 2nd and 501-yard 3rd.

There have been many 63s and even 62s shot at Twin Cities through the years. Yet the course annually ranks near the top in double bogeys or worse. That's because it has led the Tour in water balls ever since becoming a tournament in 2019. That's right, more water balls than PGA National or TPC Sawgrass. There were 129 double bogeys and 22 triples or worse last year, and a good chunk of those were wet.

With the course often playing so easy in spots yet with so much trouble lurking, this might be the one week of the year to factor in bogey avoidance AND birdie average.

As for the weather, highs will be in the 80s the first two days and in the 90s on the weekend. Almost no rain is forecast and the wind should not be a factor. 

Key Stats to Winning at TPC Twin Cities

The most important indicators every week are current form and course history. "Key Stats" follow in importance.

• Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee/Driving Distance and Accuracy
• Strokes Gained: Approach/Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green
• Strokes Gained: Putting
• Birdie Average/Birdie or Better Percentage 
• Bogey Avoidance

Past Champions

2025 - Kurt Kitayama
2024 - Jhonattan Vegas
2023 - Lee Hodges
2022 - Tony Finau
2021 - Cameron Champ
2020 - Michael Thompson
2019 - Matthew Wolff

Champion's Profile

We mentioned earlier that this might be the one course to consider birdie average and bogey avoidance. We stand by that. But ultimately, the birdies outweigh the bogeys.

Kitayama won last year at 23-under and Hodges won at 24-under in 2023. In between, Vegas won at 17-under. Last year, six guys reached 20-under.

Kitayama ranked 23rd in SG; Off-the-Tee, first in SG: Approach, 11th Around-the-Green and second Tee-to-Green, offsetting 37th in Putting.

Vegas ranked ninth in SG: Off-the-Tee -- seventh in distance, T12 in accuracy, He was also seventh in greens in regulation, eighth in SG: Approach, 53rd in Around-the-Green and eighth in Putting. That's a very strong all-around performance.

In 2023, Hodges ranked first in both Approach and Tee-to-Green and fourth in Putting, a combination that will win you a lot of golf tournaments. 

DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS

Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap

$9,000-$9,000

Kurt Kitayama - $9,800 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +2250)
Scheffler is priced at $14,900 -- $5,000 more than the second option, McNealy. There's a good chance Scheffler will win. But taking up almost 30 percent of your salary cap, with such uninspired choices in the $6,000s, it seems almost impossible to field a winning lineup. McNealy has been good but not great all season. Even though Kitayama is the defending champion -- never an easy pathway -- he is the better play. He is ranked top-16 in both SG: Approach and Tee-to-Green. He's 20th in driving distance. He's 32nd in bogey avoidance. Kitayama is not a great putter, but only one guy in this field checks all the boxes.

Tom Kim - $9,300 (+2900) 
Kim undoubtedly was heavily owned last week at the Open, and he flamed out with a missed cut. He had been playing high-pressure golf for a number of weeks in a row after not playing any for a long time. The MC provided a little rest and perhaps a chance to recharge his batteries. Kim has played here twice before, including last year's T28, which isn't bad considering the state of his game at the time. He has been outstanding all season on approach -- ranked 5th on Tour -- and tee to green -- ranked 18th. He's also ranked eighth in bogey avoidance.

$8,000-$8,900

Gary Woodland - $8,800 (+6300)
Woodland remains a great driver of the golf ball, ranking fifth on Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee. He has had a number of off weeks since winning at Houston in March. But he's also finished seventh at the RBC Heritage, 17th at the Truist, sixth at the Charles Schwab and seventh at the U.S. Open. Woodland tied for 20th here last year.

Max Homa - $8,600 (+5100) 
When Homa was at the height of his game, his forte was longer courses. Hard ones, not easy like TPC Twin Cities, but still long. He tied for 39th here last year, his first trip back after finishing third in 2020. A look at Homa's season-long stats does not instill confidence. He has been playing far better of late, though, and is now safely inside the playoff cutoff point. Homa finished second last time he was in the Midwest, at the John Deere Classic earlier this month.

Sam Stevens - $8,400 (+5700) 
Stevens has missed only four cuts all and two came in the past two weeks in Scotland and England. Note to self: Links golf is not the best fit for Stevens. He is an outstanding driver -- both in terms of distance and accuracy. That's a good fit this week. That helps explain his runner-up here a year ago and a T10 three years back.

$7,000-$7,900

Johnny Keefer - $7,800 (+5900)
If Keefer could putt even a lick, he could be a great player -- not good, great. He is ranked ninth on Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee -- he's 10th in driving distance -- and 15th in Approach. After a slow start to his rookie season, the Korn Ferry Tour's top player a year ago has made eight of his past nine cuts.

Kevin Yu - $7,400 (+9600) 
Yu had a brutal start to the season, missing 5-of-6 cuts -- and the one outlier was a no-cut event. He made the weekend in four of his past five events, including a T15 at the John Deere, where he reached 14-under-par. He's clearly a risk/reward player, ranking eighth in birdie average and 131st in bogey avoidance. Yu is ranked 35th in SG: Off-the-Tee, which should allow him to at least get off to a good start on many holes.

Ben Kohles - $7,300 (+7400) 
Kohles technically is a Korn Ferry Tour player, though he's played almost the same number of times on the PGA Tour -- 11 vs. nine. He won on the KFT and nearly pulled of a rare double by almost pulling out the John Deere. He ended up tied for third. In just those nine PGA Tour starts, Kohles has four top-25s, including at the U.S. Open. He is gaining strokes in every strokes-gained metric.

Emiliano Grillo - $7,300 (+10000) 
Grillo is not having the best season. But his history at TPC Twin Cities gets him a paragraph here. He's played there the past six years and has a runner-up, a third, a 10th and, the past two years, 24th and 20th. It makes sense for such a good ball striker. While Grillo has made only 10 cuts in 17 starts, he enters with five in a row with two top-25s, one of them at the U.S. Open.

$6,000-$6,900

Aaron Wise - $6,600 (+17500) 
We mentioned Wise above and how he has played well of late. Talent-wise, he's better than almost the entire field, having won the 2018 Rookie of the Year and being a former Tour winner. Wise missed his first six cuts this season, and that can put a significant strain on one's mental health. But he's made his past three, with a tie for third at the ISCO and a T15 at Puntacana. He's gaining strokes everywhere but off the tee.

Jimmy Stanger - $6,500 (+46000) 
This is not a whole-hearted endorsement but simply the best of what we see in a very weak bottom of the board. Stanger has made only 6-of-15 cuts, but one of them was a tie for fourth last month at the Canadian Open. (Canada is near Minnesota, right?) Stanger is ranked 13th in SG: Off-the-Tee and 70th in SG: Putting but -- and you knew there had to be a but -- he's a disastrous 155th on Approach. Still, he's ranked 53rd on Tour in birdie average.

Opening up DraftKings for the 3M Open? Load up your lineups in RotoWire's PGA DFS Lineup Optimizer.