3M Open 2024 Specials Tips: 13/2 Laird one of three top-20 candidates

The end of last weekend's Open Championship doesn't by any means give way to a lull in the golfing action, as some of the greats of the game head to Minneapolis for the 3M Open.

As always, Jamie Worsley is across it all, with his 3M Open 2024 Special Tips throwing in a few names for top-20 finishes...

This week’s 3M Open looks a wide open event and I’ve selected three players who can take advantage of this opportunity to record a top-20 finish at TPC Twin Cities.

3M Open 2024 Odds

Tony Finau leads the main outrights market at 11/1, with Sam Burns 18/1 and Akshay Bhatia 20/1. Next up are Billy Horschel and Sahith Theegala, who are both 22/1 to take home the trophy.

Jhonattan Vegas 3/1 – Top 20 – 2 pts

Jhonattan Vegas has been notably consistent over recent starts and finally turned that into a first top-20 finish of the year last time out. I’m taking him to immediately follow up with another one in Minnesota.

Vegas comes into this week having finished no worse than 27^th over his last three starts. The first of these results came when 27^th in the Canadian Open and he’s improved on each of his following two, finishing 25^th in the Rocket Mortgage Classic and 20^th in the John Deere Classic. He’s shot 10 of 12 rounds in the 60s over this period and ranks 13^th in this field in strokes-gained total over that same timeframe.

His game is all about quality ball-striking, ranking 7^th off-the-tee – where he’s long and relatively straight – and 26^th in approach. He’s the second-best player on tour in proximity from 175-200yds this season and as a strong top-25 in par 4 scoring, he has an appealing skillset for this challenge.

Vegas proved that when finishing 2^nd at TPC Twin Cities in 2021, an event in which he ranked 4^th tee-to-green and 6^th in ball-striking. He hasn’t played here since then, but as a player with further top-5 finishes in the Shriners Open, Cognizant Classic and John Deere Classic, he has the comp form to suggest he can pick up where he left off three years ago.

Golf Odds

Zac Blair 5/1 – Top 20 – 1.5 pts

Zac Blair has found form with his irons over recent weeks and having finished an encouraging 13^th here on debut last year, he looks to have every chance of a repeat performance this time around.

Blair has shown some good form over his latest starts, making both cuts in the PGA Championship and US Open – finishing an impressive 26^th at Pinehurst – and two starts ago he recorded his best finish of the season in the ISCO Championship, finishing runner-up after losing out in that five-man playoff to Harry Hall.

That was a result engineered by one of the best approach performances of his career, as he ranked 2^nd in the field. This is an area in which he’s been excelling of late, gaining strokes on four of his last six starts and ranking 16^th in this field over his last 20 rounds.

Blair fired rounds of 64 and 66 on his way to that 13^th-place finish at Twin Cities last year and with his two best PGA Tour performances coming in the last two years on comp courses – finishing runner-up in the Travelers Championship and ISCO Championship – he has plenty in his favour to crack the top-20 again this week.

Martin Laird 13/2 – Top 20 – 1.5 pts

Martin Laird ended a poor run of form with his first top-25 finish since March last week and he can keep the improvements coming in an event at which he finished 2^nd last year.

Laird had some positive form at the beginning of the year, recording top-10 finishes in the Cognizant Classic and Puerto Rico Open. However, going into last week’s Barracuda Championship, he’d missed three cuts in a row and recorded a best of just 37^th over his last seven starts.

He stopped the rot there with a 21^st-place finish, producing his best driving display of the season and with his short game continuing to look strong, he has plenty to be optimistic about heading into this week.

Laird was 42^nd at TPC Twin Cities on debut in 2019, before missing the cut in 2022. He then finished an excellent 2^nd last year, entering that week in similar form to this year, having finished 20^th in the Barracuda following an underwhelming run of results. His excellent record at TPC Summerlin in the Shriners Open, where he’s won twice and finished runner-up, suggests that his performance last year needn’t be a one-off and he looks well placed to record another top-20 this week. At 13/2, that's an implied probability of 13.3%.

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