2026 3M Open Power Rankings: Top 10 Golfers To Watch

July 22, 2026

Ian McNeill ranks his top-10 players to watch at the 2026 3M Open from TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota. His data-backed insights into who is primed for success.

With the final major championship of the year in the rearview, time is running out for players to leave their mark on the 2026 campaign.

From rising stars chasing their first taste of Tour success to established names hoping to reignite stalled seasons, TPC Twin Cities offers something for everyone this week -- but for a lot of this field, it's about more than opportunity. With the FedEx Cup Playoffs just two events away, a strong week in Minnesota could be the difference between playing meaningful golf in August and watching it from home.

With the stakes set and the field loaded, here are my top 10 players to watch at the 2026 3M Open!

No. 10 - Jackson Koivun

After christening his professional career with a missed cut at TPC Deere Run, one of the most accomplished amateurs of the last decade didn't take long to right the ship: finishing 10th at the ISCO Championship whilst flashing both his elite ball-striking -- 7th in Fairway Proximity for the week -- and his short game prowess, gaining over six shots on the field chipping and putting.

Now on the right track, Koivun gets another bentgrass course to tackle this week, and while he hasn't yet seen TPC Twin Cities in competition, that's hardly a concern. Fittingly set in the land of 10,000 lakes, the course's ever-present water hazards make it one of the more punishing routings on Tour to off-line tee shots. But with few projectable weaknesses and a driving profile built more on precision than pure power, Koivun profiles as one of the players best equipped to avoid that trouble.

And if he needs extra motivation, he has it -- the last time Jackson saw Scottie Scheffler in a PGA Tour event, he led the World No. 1 by a stroke through 54 holes at Silverado last fall. And while Scheffler ultimately ran him and Ben Griffin down to win the Procore title, there's no doubt Koivun will be eager for one more shot at the best player on the planet.

No. 9 - Ben Kohles

Not his time. Yet.

Ben Kohles stepped onto the 72nd tee with a chance to win the @JDClassic with a birdie before a heartbreaking finish. pic.twitter.com/kTur9tTNon

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 5, 2026

Ben Kohles appeared destined to break through at the John Deere Classic, but despite holding command for much of the final round, a pulled 8-iron into the water left of 18 ultimately sunk the 36-year-old -- and opened the door for Chris Gotterup's dramatic comeback win.

Painful as it was, the week revealed a game fully capable of hanging with the Tour's best: Kohles led the field for the week in Driving Accuracy at 83.9%, ranked 3rd in Greens in Regulation at 83.3%, and gained strokes in all four major statistical categories.

That form carried into last week's ISCO Championship, where Kohles backed it up with a T15 finish and his best putting performance of the season, gaining 5.84 strokes on Hurstbourne's bentgrass greens. He'll stay in the Midwest again this week, and just as importantly, arrives fresh off his first week away from competition since the start of May.

His profile fits TPC Twin Cities to a tee. Kohles ranks 1st in this field in Good Drive Percentage, 6th in Strokes Gained: Approach, and 9th in Mid-Iron Proximity. Even the putter, long considered the weak link in his game, has quietly come around, sitting two strokes above the field average over his last four starts.

Time will tell how sustainable this run is, but the signs keep pointing the same direction. Kohles has posted top-25 finishes at the 3M Open in both 2024 and 2025, and it's not as if closing has ever really been the issue -- he's a five-time Korn Ferry Tour champion, having added to that total at the BMW Charity Pro-Am just a month and a half ago. After coming one swing away from his first PGA Tour title three weeks ago, Kohles will no doubt feel as close as ever to that long-awaited breakthrough.

No. 8 - Pierceson Coody

Few young players on Tour have carried the weight of expectation quite like Pierceson Coody. A blue-chip recruit who captured a National Championship and rose to World No. 1 in the amateur rankings at Texas, Coody wasted little time validating the hype after turning professional, winning in just his third Korn Ferry Tour start before adding two more victories the following season. Even his path to the PGA Tour was accelerated, earning promotion in only 15 starts while recording nine finishes of 12th or better.

Now, it finally feels as though those lofty expectations are beginning to translate at the highest level. A T28 at Royal Birkdale gave Coody back-to-back top-30 finishes in major championships, and this week he returns to a venue where he finished third a season ago. The fit is hardly a coincidence. Coody possesses two of the most valuable traits at TPC Twin Cities: an elite driving profile that ranks among the top 20 players in this field in Total Driving while gaining strokes off the tee in nine of his last 10 starts, and one of the best bentgrass putting resumes in attendance, gaining 0.76 strokes per round on the surface over the last two seasons.

Those strengths fueled last year's podium finish almost single-handedly. Coody gained 4.66 strokes off the tee and another 5.94 with his short game en route to third place, proving he doesn't need a perfect week with his irons to contend here. That said, even that piece of the puzzle appears to be trending in the right direction, with strokes gained on approach in three of his last four starts. If history at TPC Twin Cities is any indication, it may not take much more than that for one of golf's most accomplished young prospects to finally break through for his first PGA Tour victory.

No. 7 - Max Homa

Max Homa stays rolling on the back nine with a birdie on 15 🔥🎯

📺 NBC pic.twitter.com/xcaUQ0odZt

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) July 18, 2026

I'm still not convinced Max Homa is destined to reclaim his place among the world's elite, but for the first time in quite a while, there's tangible evidence that the climb back has begun.

A six-time PGA Tour winner and just a couple of seasons removed from ranking inside the world's top 10, Homa brings a level of pedigree that few players in this week's field can match. More importantly, his recent performances suggest he's beginning to rediscover the foundation that carried him there. Finishes of T22, T20, runner-up, T39, and a T28 at last week's Open paint the picture of a player steadily rebuilding confidence, but the most encouraging development has come with his irons. Homa gained 3.4 strokes on approach at the John Deere before adding another 2.6 at The Open -- a promising sign for a player who was once one of the best ball-strikers in the world.

TPC Twin Cities should only amplify that momentum. Its generous driving corridors and expansive greens reward players who can attack pins without fear. And on bentgrass specifically, Homa is among the most dangerous commodities in the game -- he's gained over seven-tenths of a stroke per round on the surface over the last two seasons, the fifth-best mark in the entire field.

The climb back rarely happens all at once, but Homa looks like a man taking real strides toward the top of that hill.

No. 6 - Jackson Suber

For much of last week's Open Championship, Jackson Suber looked like he belonged. The 27-year-old spent much of the week inside the top 10 at Royal Birkdale, continuing a summer-long stretch that has quietly transformed him from an intriguing young talent into one of the hottest players on Tour.

Suber has spent the last three months living near the top of leaderboards, posting three top-six finishes across his last seven starts while repeatedly proving his game travels. Even his best performances of the season have followed a familiar blueprint: bentgrass courses in the Midwest, including TPC Craig Ranch, TPC Toronto, and TPC Deere Run. This week's return to another birdie-heavy TPC venue gives him yet another opportunity to capitalize on a course setup that has consistently brought out his best.

The profile backs up the pattern. Suber ranks inside the top 15 in this field in Good Drive Percentage, Weighted Proximity, and Strokes Gained: Approach, giving him the tee-to-green foundation to take advantage of a course that rewards precision ball-striking, while a top-15 mark in Birdie or Better Rate suggests he's more than capable of going low when the putter gets hot.

The breakthrough has been building for months. Now, after proving he can contend against elite competition on the sport's biggest stages, Suber arrives at TPC Twin Cities as one of the clearest breakout candidates in the field.

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No. 5 - Maverick McNealy

It's been a solid, if unspectacular, season for Maverick McNealy. Nine top-25 finishes in 17 starts don't immediately jump off the page, nor does a campaign still searching for a second PGA Tour title. But what's easy to overlook is just how remarkably high his floor has remained despite one of the most demanding schedules on Tour. McNealy has finished outside the top 32 only four times all season, compiling those results almost exclusively against major championship and signature-event fields.

That context changes dramatically this week. McNealy returns to TPC Twin Cities, where he finished T3 two years ago, and for the first time since the Valero Texas Open in April, he'll tee it up in a regular PGA Tour event. It's the first opportunity in nearly four months for one of the Tour's steadiest performers to measure himself against a field lacking the game's usual collection of superstars.

The statistical profile won't overwhelm anyone at first glance. Outside of a putter that ranks eighth in this field this season and 12th on bentgrass over the last three years, McNealy doesn't dominate many categories. But those numbers deserve context. They've been accumulated against the strongest competition professional golf has to offer. Drop a player of McNealy's caliber into a field this comparatively shallow, and that consistency suddenly carries considerably more upside. Quietly, he arrives as one of the safest bets in the field to contend.

No. 4 - Hideki Matsuyama

Hideki Matsuyama dials it in from 162 to close birdie range on the 9th

📺 Peacock pic.twitter.com/lvaVnzE31v

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) June 18, 2026

Hideki Matsuyama may not arrive at TPC Twin Cities with the eye-catching recent finishes or overwhelming course history of some of the names ahead of him, but after an uninspiring stretch through May and June, there are finally signs that his season may be turning a corner.

The culprit behind Matsuyama's dip in form has hardly been a mystery. After years of relying on one of the steadiest tee-to-green games in golf, his driver suddenly became a liability, costing him a chance at a third WM Phoenix Open title and dropping him outside the top 100 on Tour in Driving Accuracy. Yet over his last two starts, that weakness has looked far less pronounced. Matsuyama found 75 percent of his fairways at the Travelers Championship -- 13th in the field and eight percentage points above the tournament average -- before improving again at Royal Birkdale, where he hit 63 percent of his fairways, ninth-best in the championship and a remarkable 12 percentage points better than the field.

The results have followed this driving upswing: back-to-back T14s against much deeper fields. And if this trend holds, Matsuyama immediately becomes one of the most dangerous players in the tournament. TPC Twin Cities has consistently rewarded elite ball-strikers, and few players in this field possess a résumé that rivals his. He remains one of the game's premier middle-iron players, ranking in the 90th percentile in proximity from 150-200 yards, while another quietly encouraging development has come on the greens. Matsuyama has gained strokes putting in four of his last six starts and 10 of his 17 appearances this season, the first time in seven years he's rated out as an above-average putter over the course of an entire campaign.

With the driver no longer holding him back, this finally looks like the complete version of Matsuyama -- a player with a CV only Scottie Scheffler can match in this week's field.

While Tom Kim was unable to parlay his Genesis Scottish Open victory into another paycheck at Royal Birkdale, his missed cut did little to derail the momentum he's built over the last month. If anything, it reinforced just how dangerous his game has become. Kim gained a staggering 3.84 strokes on approach over just two rounds at The Open, the best per-round mark in the entire field, a reminder that his iron play has quietly returned to the elite level that once made him one of golf's brightest young stars.

That resurgence has already produced a victory and three additional top-15 finishes over his last eight starts, and TPC Twin Cities should only accentuate those strengths. Kim ranks 14th in this field in Good Drive Percentage, an ideal profile for a course where avoiding penalty areas off the tee is paramount, while his previous two visits to Minnesota have resulted in finishes of 26th and 28th. Across those eight competitive rounds, he's gained a combined 5.77 strokes on approach, further reinforcing just how naturally this venue suits his eye.

The only remaining question is the putter. It hasn't consistently resembled the weapon that fueled Kim's rapid ascent up the world rankings, but the last month has served as a reminder of what happens when it cooperates. With the ball-striking once again trending toward elite territory, an average week on the greens may be all that's needed for Kim to find himself back in contention. Don't be surprised if TPC Twin Cities serves as another launching pad toward the world's top 20.

Royal Birkdale did not produce another major championship for Scottie Scheffler, but it may have delivered the most encouraging sign yet that his best golf of 2026 is still ahead of him.

Scheffler gained a staggering 11.06 strokes tee-to-green at The Open, his best ball-striking performance since the Masters, and while a T4 finish left a little on the table, the numbers suggested he was little more than a few putts away from another year with the Claret Jug.x

Now Scheffler heads to TPC Twin Cities for the first time in his career facing a field without another player ranked inside the world's top 30. The course presents a new challenge, but the formula remains the same: elite driving, relentless approach play, and a level of consistency that has separated him from the rest of the sport for the better part of three years.

If the putter shows even modest improvement, this week could quickly become less of a competition and more of a coronation.

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