3M Open One and Done Strategy: Staying Dry

Small purse, full field, lots of water.  $8.4 million in the pot, $1.512 to the winner.  Not a make or break event like last week, but still a nice spot to pick up some points as we are quickly running out of chances.  There are some big names at the top that should be tempting to the leaders in the contests, but we’ve only really seen the favorite get it done once in the six years played here.

Be sure to check out Ron’s course preview if you haven’t already, as well as the newsletter and Noonan’s betting article.

Water Danger

First and foremost (and most obvious), there is water danger everywhere and we can add a filter to the Rabbit Hole data to see how the field has played in simialr conditions (most likely here and in a few Florida courses).  Below is the past two years sorted by total strokes gained average in such conditions (min 12 rounds).  Three of the big favorites in the top 10.

Easy Scoring Conditions

Another heavily leaned on narrative that probably bears exploring is playing well on other similar tracks that play fairly easy, maybe even just limiting it to the other courses that we’ve just seen by selection Detroit GC and TPC Deere Run.  I went with the former, filtering the data for easy and very easy scoring rounds, past two years.

Stud Ball Strikers

Finally, it’s a “keep it on the wide-ass fairways and hit your long irons well” kind of week, and strong ball strikers have always done well.  No filters, no limiting factors, this is just the past 24 months of golf.  As you can see some of the newer members of the tour have smaller samples, but they are still large enough to be taken seriously in my opinion.  Look at all these bad putters though!  I’m salivating at the idea of adding more outrights from team “no putt”

3M Open One and Done Suggestions

With the smaller purse, you can afford to get a little wild here, but if you’re timid, and you have him available, you could do a lot worse than Sam Burns.  I watched him a bit in the practice round yesterday, and he certainly wasn’t just going through the motions.  He was playing solo, hitting two balls per hole and spending extra times on the greens, hitting putts at multiple hole location using some hole cup rings.

Despite modeling well, I’m a little wary of Wyndham Clark here, as he can get a little wayward off the tee at times, but he, Chris Gotterup or Maverick McNealy are certainly fine picks for someone who’s near the top of the leaderboard in their pool.

Chaser Picks

Luke Clanton
Si Woo Kim
Adam Scott
Keith Mitchell

Good Luck, Have Fun!