TPC Twin Cities: course profile and statistical fit guide

Kurt Kitayama shot 60 on the Saturday of last year's 3M Open, matched the tournament record, and won on Sunday at twenty-three under. Here is the part that stuck with me when I went back through the numbers: across those four rounds he gained two-tenths of a shot per round on the greens. Two-tenths. Almost everything else came from his irons, where he gained close to two and a half shots a round.

Tony Finau, the last winner before that in our archive, did much the same thing in 2022. Seventeen under, three clear, nearly two shots a round gained on approach, and 0.21 on the putting green. Two winners, two flat putting weeks, two very good iron weeks.

I want to be careful here, because two is not a sample. But it is an interesting two, and it sits awkwardly next to what the rest of the leaderboard looks like.

The course, briefly

TPC Twin Cities sits in Blaine, just north of Minneapolis. Arnold Palmer design, opened in 2000, par 71 at 7,431 yards, with water in play across a good deal of it. The par-5 18th is reachable with a lake down the right, which is the sort of finishing hole that produces eagles and very quiet walks to the scorer's hut in roughly equal measure. It hosts the 3M Open from 23 to 26 July, third from last in the FedExCup regular season, with Kitayama back to defend and Scottie Scheffler making his first start at the venue.

What the strokes-gained record actually says

These are per-round averages from the shot-level archive we hold for this event, split by where players finished.

• Top ten. Off the tee +0.68, approach +0.93, around the green +0.32, putting +1.06. Tee to green +1.92, total +2.99.
• Eleventh to twenty-fifth. Off the tee +0.41, approach +0.78, around the green +0.20, putting +0.36.
• Twenty-sixth and worse. Essentially flat in every category.

Put the top two rows next to each other. The approach numbers barely move: 0.93 against 0.78, a fraction of a shot a round across seventy-two holes. The putting numbers move enormously: 1.06 against 0.36, close to three times as much. On this evidence, the difference between a top-ten finish at TPC Twin Cities and a respectable top twenty-five is very largely decided on the greens.

The bit I cannot tidy up

So which is it? The top ten got there by holing everything. The two winners in our archive got there with cold putters and outstanding irons. Both statements are true and they pull in different directions.

The reading I would offer, and it is a reading rather than a finding, is that a soft, birdie-heavy course lets one hot week on the greens carry a player into the top ten from almost anywhere, while actually winning has needed something more repeatable underneath it. Kitayama's 60 was a putting round folded into an iron week. I would rather say plainly that our archive holds two editions of this tournament than pretend two winners settle the question. They do not.

What we do with it

Our model reads the entire field rather than a shortlist, and it leans on the skills that repeat. Approach play repeats. Driving repeats reasonably well. Putting, week to week, mostly does not, which is why we do not chase a hot putter into a short price. That will cost us in any week where the greens decide everything, and a course like this one is exactly where that cost shows up. Worth saying out loud rather than discovering on a Sunday evening.

The whole-field ranking for the 3M Open, including where the model disagrees with the market, sits on the event page. Every selection we have made, hit or miss, is on the results archive. If the terminology above is unfamiliar, there is a plain-English guide to what strokes gained actually measures, and a fuller 3M Open research primer alongside this one.

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ProPlace provides statistical research and analysis only. We do not accept stakes and we are not a tipster or a bookmaker.

Since going live in April 2026, ProPlace has logged 24 tournaments and 94 selections — every win and every miss — returning +£1,385 to a flat £10 each-way stake (+74% ROI). Past performance is not a guide to future returns.

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