The PGA Tour returns to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul MN for the second iteration of the 3M Open this week. On hand will be the normal TV crew, no fans, and the weakest field since the Tour resumed in early June – two of the top 10 players in this week’s Hawley Ratings (Tommy Fleetwood and Dustin Johnson), two more of the top 20 (Brooks Koepka and Paul Casey), and only nine of the top 50. With the talent pool watered down, this one appears to be wide open. Let’s look at it from three viewpoints, the top picks overall, those who have made the biggest splash since the Tour resumed, and who appears to be a good fit for the course. First, the top picks.

My analysis has Fleetwood as the favorite. The 29-year-old native of Southport, United Kingdom, near Liverpool on the northwest coast, had a good thing going in the two months leading up to the March Arnold Palmer Invitational. He was four-out-of-four in top-20 finishes in 2020, two of those in the top three, then missed the cut in the Palmer and hasn’t been seen in competitive company since then. He’s the highest ranked player in the field and seems to be a fit for the TPC Twin Cities course in Blaine, north of the metro area.

Fleetwood took a little heat from world no. 1 Rory McIlroy in June over Fleetwood’s hiatus from competition. He shrugged it off and arrived in the U.S. in early July for 14 days self-quarantining. “I guess there’s always going to be a little bit of a concern, a little bit of unknown,” Fleetwood told skysports.com, “but in terms of getting back out playing again, I can’t wait. I’ve had a beautiful time at home, and I’ve enjoyed playing golf at home, but it’ll be nice to get us back going again.” He did not play the 3M last year.

Next on the list is the somewhat inconsistent DJ. After a great run on top of the world ratings from 2017 into 2019, he started a long, slow slide through the top 10, then won the Travelers in June, and shockingly followed that with a pair of 80s in last week’s Memorial. He hasn’t had two straight events with ratings higher than his current Hawley number of 1323 since spring in 2019. However, his renowned skills off the tee box should be useful on this track.

The third pick is another long-ball-hitting former major winner, Koepka. Oh yeah, and inconsistent too. The winner of four majors over the last three seasons has had only one solid outing – a seventh in the Heritage — in seven 2020 appearances.

Next we have another UK native, Casey. Like the three above, the last few events have been nothing special. Since returning from the covid-19 break, he squeezed into the top 40 at the Travelers and missed the cut at the Memorial. Before that he just missed the top 10 at the WGC-Mexico event.

Looking at the field strictly from a success standpoint, Harris English, Ryan Armour, Johnson, Mackenzie Hughes, and Lucas Glover have done the most among 3M entrants with two or more made cuts since June.

English, the 30-year-old Georgian, finished in the top 20 in the Memorial and Heritage, with a missed cut in the Schwab. Armour has top 10s in the Rocket and Travelers to go with two missed cuts. Hughes, 29, a Canadian, has top-10s in the Memorial and Travelers, and made the cut in one of three other June/ July appearances. The veteran Glover has made the cut five of five times since June with the best three finishes all being a bit above 25th in the Travelers, Heritage, and Schwab.

Based on the brief sample size of one event, the stats most closely correlated with success at TPC Twin Cities are scrambling, driving accuracy, and driving distance. Tops in the field for the extent to which his statistical profile matches those stats is Doc Redman. Within a half-stroke, per the Hawley course fit statistics, in order, are Ryan Moore, English, Fleetwood, Brendan Todd, KH Lee, Harry Higgs, Nick Taylor, Alex Noren, Johnson, Bubba Watson, and KJ Choi.

Taking one last perspective of the field, the following are players who have done the most to improve their rating number since the Palmer: Henrik Norlander, Hughes, Redman, Chase Seiffert, and English. Norlander has made the cut the last four weeks, topping it with a top-10 last week in the Memorial. Seiffert has made the cut in one of two appearances, but it was a good one, fourth in the Workday.

The Euro Tour is back in action in the UK this week. After two low-budget events in Austria the last two weeks, that tour reappears in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, with the Betfred British Masters hosted by Lee Westwood. After currency conversion, the purse is under $1.5 million.