The 3M Open runs from Thursday 23 July to Sunday 26 July 2026 at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota.

The purse is $8.8 million, the winner banks $1.58 million plus 500 FedExCup points, and the opening group goes out at 9:45pm AEST Thursday night.

Scottie Scheffler is the headline. The world No. 1 has never played this tournament, and his commitment makes him the first top-ranked player to turn up in Blaine since Brooks Koepka in 2019. The field was finalised with 144 players, 53 of them inside the world's top 125, representing 21 countries.

That is a serious week by 3M Open standards, and it lands on a golf course that gives up scoring like almost nothing else on the schedule.

Below you will find the course breakdown, the contenders, the Australian angle, every market Sportsbet has open on the 3M Open and the AEST broadcast times.

When the 3M Open Starts and How to Watch in Australia

Play begins Thursday morning in Minnesota, which drops round one squarely into Australian prime time and the small hours after it.

Fox Sports 503 and Kayo Sports carry all four rounds live. Round one coverage starts at 9:30pm AEST Thursday and runs through to 9am Friday.

Round two picks up at 11pm AEST Friday and runs to 9am Saturday. The weekend is for early risers, with both round three and the final round live from 3am to 8am AEST on Sunday and Monday respectively.

The first tee time of the tournament is 9:45pm AEST Thursday. Karl Vilips is out at 10:29pm AEST, Cam Davis follows eleven minutes later at 10:40pm, and New Zealand's Thomas Campbell goes at 4:39am AEST Friday morning.

Scheffler is grouped with Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im, which is comfortably the best three ball on the sheet.

TPC Twin Cities Is a Birdie Track With Teeth

Arnold Palmer designed TPC Twin Cities and it opened in 2000. It plays as a par 71 at 7,431 yards, and while that reads long, it plays shorter than it measures because the field can cut corners and fly hazards off the tee.

The greens are enormous and short on nuance. Scoring gets silly. Kurt Kitayama won last year at 23 under, Lee Hodges won at 24 under in 2023, and the 2025 tournament coughed up five rounds of 62 or better including two 60s.

The single round record here is 60, set twice in the same week last July by Adam Svensson on Thursday and Kitayama on Saturday.

Water is the defence, and it is in play across the majority of the property. Anyone whose driver is misbehaving gets punished, particularly down the right side of the back nine.

Generous scoring paired with a severe penalty for one loose swing is exactly why the winners list reads the way it does.

Matthew Wolff, Cameron Champ, Tony Finau and Kitayama have all won here, and every one of them hits it a long way.

Distance travels well in Blaine. Putting matters less than usual because the greens are big and relatively straightforward, so the sensible read is to weight ball striking heavily and treat the flat stick as a bonus rather than the deciding factor.

Conditions look benign. Thursday sits around 28 degrees, the weekend pushes into the mid 30s, and the strongest breeze arrives Friday at roughly 16 to 32 km/h. Nothing in that forecast suggests the winning score comes back towards the field.

Scottie Scheffler and the Gap to Everyone Else

Scheffler is a heavy favourite and the market has him a long way clear. He has earned that on raw ability. He is also not the machine he was twelve months ago.

One win in 2026, and it arrived in January at The American Express. Since then he has been runner-up four times, including at the Masters, and he lost a playoff to Viktor Hovland at the Travelers Championship in June.

Then came the Genesis Scottish Open, where he missed a cut for the first time since August 2022 and ended a run of 78 consecutive weekends made, the longest streak anyone has assembled since Tiger Woods.

He answered with a tied fourth at The Open at Royal Birkdale, defending the Claret Jug he won in 2025. Across his first 15 starts this year he had one win and nine top-five finishes, which is elite by any standard other than his own.

The reason he is in Minnesota is scheduling rather than sentiment. Scheffler said he did not want to walk into the FedExCup Playoffs cold after a three week break, so he wanted competitive rounds first

He leads the FedExCup standings and TPC Twin Cities gives him a soft landing to find some rhythm before the postseason.

The numbers back the price. He leads this field in strokes gained on approach and sits second in strokes gained around the green. On a course where iron play decides everything, that is a nasty combination for the other 143 blokes in the field.

The counter is just as simple. A 20 under shootout flattens the gap between the best player alive and the bloke ranked 120th, because there is nowhere for superior scrambling and course management to earn strokes when everybody is making birdies.

Scheffler wins this by outscoring people, not by out-thinking them, and the course removes some of his edge.

Kurt Kitayama Chases Something Nobody Has Done

Kitayama returns as defending champion with a genuine shot at a piece of tournament history.

The 3M Open has been played seven times and produced seven different winners. Nobody has gone back to back. Nobody has even won it twice. Kitayama is trying to be the first.

His 2025 win was a proper performance rather than a fluke. He started the final round tied third, shot 6 under and beat Sam Stevens by one at 23 under, leading the field by nearly 10 strokes gained on approach and more than 13.5 tee to green across the week. His weekend rounds were 60 and 65.

Form since has been patchy. He finished 33rd at the John Deere Classic, missed the cut in Canada and finished tied 40th at Royal Birkdale.

History suggests that matters less here than it would anywhere else, because TPC Twin Cities has a habit of reviving players who fit the course, and Kitayama did not arrive in flying form last year either.

Who Else Can Win the 3M Open

Behind Scheffler and Kitayama the market bunches up fast, which is where the week gets interesting.

Hideki Matsuyama owns 11 PGA Tour titles and has made 28 consecutive cuts. He posted a tied 14th at Royal Birkdale and returns to Blaine for the first time since a tied 30th in 2023. If the irons are behaving he can string together the kind of run that gets past 20 under.

Maverick McNealy is one of a handful of top-50 players teeing it up. He finished third here in 2024 after a third round 63 and ranks 25th on Tour in birdie average, which is precisely the skill this place rewards.

His missed cut at Royal Birkdale was only his second missed weekend in 17 starts this season.

Tom Kim arrives as the freshest winner in the field. He closed with a 64 to take the Genesis Scottish Open, his first Tour win since 2023 and his fourth overall, and he finished third at the US Open before that. He then missed the cut at The Open, so the form line zigzags rather than climbs.

Corey Conners led the entire field in strokes gained on approach at The Open, and he remains one of the most accurate drivers here, which counts for more than usual with water everywhere.

Tied 23rd at the US Open, tied seventh at the Travelers, tied 14th at Royal Birkdale. The ball striking has come back and the only question left is the putter.

Jackson Koivun is the one we would watch closest. The Auburn product turned professional after finishing tied 23rd at the US Open, having swept all three national player of the year awards in both 2024 and 2026 and broken Collin Morikawa's NCAA single season scoring record.

He was among the favourites in his professional debut at the John Deere Classic, which tells you how the industry rates him. A bomber's course suits him.

Keith Mitchell, Jake Knapp, Michael Brennan and Tony Finau all bring the length this venue asks for. Finau's record here is outstanding, with the 2022 title plus finishes of third, seventh and 12th.

Brennan ranks third in the field for driving distance over the past three months and tied fifth in strokes gained off the tee across the same window, though the accuracy question that follows every bomber applies once the water starts appearing.

Max Homa, Sungjae Im and Brian Harman are all here out of necessity rather than choice, and the reasons are covered further down. The rest of the world's elite are either resting after the majors or playing LIV Golf elsewhere.

The Aussie Angle: Cam Davis and Karl Vilips

Australia has two runners this week, and Jason Day is not one of them.

Day withdrew on Wednesday with the back injury that has dogged him for the better part of a decade and forced him out of the US Open after nine holes at Shinnecock Hills. Charley Hoffman took his place.

Day sits 72nd in the FedExCup standings with three events left in the regular season and only the top 70 advancing to the playoffs, so the timing is about as bad as it gets.

He opened the year with a runner-up finish at The American Express and has not found anything like that since.

Cam Davis is the more accomplished of the two remaining Australians.

He is a two-time PGA Tour winner and his TPC Twin Cities record is solid, with a tied 10th in 2023 and three straight finishes of tied 19th or better before he missed the cut here last year.

His 2026 has been ordinary, though a tied 21st at the Genesis Scottish Open in his most recent start suggests the game is not far away. He goes out with Garrick Higgo and Stephan Jaeger.

Karl Vilips is 24, born in Jakarta, a Stanford product who won the Puerto Rico Open in 2025 for his maiden Tour title. He sits around 122nd in FedExCup points and needs a big fortnight to keep his season breathing.

His best result this year was a tied 13th at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. He plays with William Mouw and Joe Highsmith.

New Zealand's Thomas Campbell completes the Oceania contingent.

He is a PGA professional at The Wilds Golf Club in Minnesota, playing his second 3M Open after being named Minnesota PGA Professional Player of the Year for a second straight year.

Sportsbet has a Top Oceania market covering all three, which is the tidiest way to back the region without needing one of them to beat the world No. 1.

Every 3M Open Market at Sportsbet

The board runs from outright winner all the way down to what a nominated player scores on a single hole. Here is what is open on the 3M Open golf betting page.

Outright and Winner Without Scheffler

Win Only is the main market. With Scheffler such a dominant favourite, plenty of punters will head straight for Winner Without Scheffler, which removes him from the equation entirely so a runner-up finish behind him still collects.

Two Chances to Win, Three Chances to Win and Four Chances to Win bundle multiple players into a single bet, paying out if any one of the nominated group takes the title.

Top Finish Markets

Top 5, Top 10 and Top 20 are all live, and each has a separate Finish Including Ties version alongside it.

The difference matters at settlement. The standard markets apply dead heat rules when players tie, while the Including Ties versions pay in full if your player ties for the relevant position.

1st Round Leader is also open, with each way terms of five places at a quarter of the odds.

Nationality Markets

This is where the 3M Open board gets properly deep. Top USA, Top European, Top North American, Top Rest of the World, Top Asian, Top African, Top South American, Top Canadian, Top Oceania, Top UK and Ireland, Top Nordic, Top Continental European, Top Danish, Top English, Top German and Top Japanese are all available.

Several carry each way terms and the number of places varies between them, so check the terms on the market before you have a punt.

Groups, Matchbets and 3 Balls

Sportsbet has split the field into lettered groups, each a small pool of players where you back the best finisher of that pool.

Group A is headed by Scheffler, Kitayama and McNealy, Group B by Matsuyama and Tom Kim, and so on down the board.

72 Hole Matchbets put two players head to head across the full tournament.

18 Hole Matchbets do the same for round one only. 3 Ball markets follow the actual tee sheet, so you are backing one player to beat the other two in his own group over 18 holes.

The marquee three ball has Scheffler alongside Matsuyama and Im. Kitayama plays with Billy Horschel and Koivun, and Cam Davis is out with Higgo and Jaeger.

Player Props and Round 1 Markets

Round 1 Score gives you an over or under on a nominated player's opening 18 holes.

Number of Birdies (or better) in the Round works the same way for round one birdie counts, and on a course this soft those lines get plenty of attention.

Round 1 Hole Score markets are the most granular on the board. You are picking whether a nominated player makes birdie or better, par, or bogey or worse on a specific hole.

Winning Score and Hole in One

Winning Score is an over or under on the champion's 72 hole total, and the history is a useful starting point given four of the last five winners have finished 17 under or better with two of them getting past 23 under.

Will There Be a Hole in One does what it says. Thorbjørn Olesen made one at the eighth in round three last year, and he is back in the field this week.

Why This Week Matters More Than the Purse Suggests

The 3M Open is the third last event of the PGA Tour's regular season, and the arithmetic is unforgiving for anyone outside the top 70 in FedExCup points.

Only that top 70 advance to the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first playoff event. That is why big names in ordinary form have washed up in Minnesota. Finau, Homa, Im and Harman are all on the wrong side of the line with two tournaments after this one to fix it.

Desperation tends to produce aggressive golf, and aggressive golf at TPC Twin Cities either wins you the thing or drowns you.

The precedent is real. Finau turned a hot final round at The Open in 2022 into a 3M Open title the following week. Hodges flew back from an early exit at Hoylake and won here in 2023. We would expect at least one player in that bracket to go low early and hang around.

Past 3M Open Winners

Seven editions, seven different champions, and no Australian among them.

• 2025: Kurt Kitayama, 23 under
• 2024: Jhonattan Vegas, 17 under
• 2023: Lee Hodges, 24 under
• 2022: Tony Finau, 17 under
• 2021: Cameron Champ, 15 under
• 2020: Michael Thompson, 19 under
• 2019: Matthew Wolff, 21 under

Hodges holds the record margin at seven shots and is the only wire to wire winner in tournament history. Finau produced the best comeback, running down a five shot deficit in 2022. The largest 54 hole lead anyone has taken into a Sunday here is five, also Hodges.