Where does the 3M Open fit in golf’s landscape?

The PGA Tour’s 3M Open returns to TPC Twin Cities in Blaine this week for the seventh time, and the first time since it extended its title sponsor last winter for the next five years.

So much has changed on the golf landscape since the Twin Cities said goodbye to a PGA Tour Champions event after 26 years and welcomed the PGA Tour back in 2019 after 50-some years gone.

The Saudi-backed upstart LIV Golf league debuted in 2022, luring some of the PGA Tour’s big stars with, according to reports, a total investment that’s now approaching $5 billion. Among those who jumped leagues for as much as $300 million each include Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Sergio García and Patrick Reed.

The PGA Tour, to compete with LIV Golf, remade its season by elevating eight “signature” events that have smaller fields and big prize money. Those eight include the season-opening Sentry in Hawaii and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am as well as the Players Championship, the Memorial and Arnold Palmer Invitational.

The signature events are intended to feature the tour’s biggest stars competing against each other more often beyond the four major championships.

That leaves the 3M Open and other non-major and non-signature events seeking to fill 156-player fields.

The 3M Open has other factors that impact its strength of field every year, such as an annual schedule slot that’s the week after the British Open overseas, with all its travel challenges. The inaugural 3M Open in 2019 was held over the July 4th weekend, a challenging time to attract spectators.

3M Open organizers no longer charter a flight to get British Open participants back to the U.S. on Sunday night before the tournament because of rising costs in everything. But they do pamper players, their families and their caddies once they arrive on site with dinners, a caddie lounge and activities for players’ children.

“The experience once you get here has become more and more important to the players,” 3M tournament director Mike Welch said. “We do think that makes a difference, and who doesn’t love a Minnesota summer?”

Executive tournament director Hollis Cavner astutely invited almost-famous college stars Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff that first year, and Wolff made eagle on the final hole to beat fellow long hitter DeChambeau.

The 3M Open has since become the penultimate event in the PGA Tour’s regular season, just ahead of the regular-season finale, the Wyndham Championship. It has produced winners ranging from first-timers Wolff and Lee Hodges to perennial PGA Tour contender Tony Finau to last year’s winner, Jhonattan Vegas, who has won four times on the PGA Tour.

Last July, J.J. Spaun contended for the 3M Open title and finished tied for ninth. Last month, he won the U.S. Open.

World No. 17 Maverick McNealy — a 3M Open contender last summer who finished tied for third — is the highest-ranked player committed this week and was on Thursday’s British Open leaderboard.

Five-time PGA Tour winner Sam Burns (22nd) and 2023 U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark (28th) are the other two players in the field who are ranked in the world’s top 30. Fifty-one players in the field have won a PGA Tour event in the past two years.

Six-time tour winner Max Homa committed. So have up-and-comers Akshay Bhatia (38th), Sahith Theegala (46th) and Tom Kim (60th) and two-time major winner Zach Johnson.

Former 3M Open champions Vegas (last season), Hodges (2023), Finau (2022) and Cameron Champ (2021) have committed to play. Vegas is the only player who has finished both first and second at the 3M Open.

“It was an incredible week,” Vegas said in March. “It’s a course I’ve enjoyed since I went there. I had a little bit of a heartbreak the year before when I finished second. It was tough because I felt like I had played great.”

Players with Minnesota connections include Stillwater’s Frankie Capan III, former Gopher Erik van Rooyen, Spring Lake Park grad Troy Merritt and two-time Minnesota state amateur champ Tom Hoge, from Fargo.

Sixty-four players from among the world’s top 125 will play this week.

“This will be the deepest field we have ever had,” Welch said. “We’re still lacking the top-end talent — the ones through the 10s — but the depth of field is there.”

Welch touts the tournament’s positioning in the PGA Tour schedule and what’s at stake for golfers playing out the regular season into the FedEx Playoffs. The top 70 in the FedEx points standings advance to the playoffs’ first round at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis. The top 50 there play the next week at the BMW Championship for 30 spots at the finale Tour Championship in Atlanta.

Vegas, for one, is 52nd on this week’s FedExCup standings. Former world No. 1 player and Masters champ Adam Scott and 2019 U.S. Open champ Gary Woodland committed before Friday’s deadline, seeking to get inside that top 70 these next two weeks.

“These benchmarks have been set, and these players know it,” Welch said.

Vegas is coming back for the chance to win a fifth time on the PGA Tour. Last year, he shot 17 under par and beat runner-up Max Greyserman by a shot. He did it with his entire family in attendance.

“They’d seen the trophies at home and all that,” Vegas said. “My daughter was 2 when I won my third tournament. They lived the whole experience with me this time. I remember them telling me how nervous they felt, the attention they were getting. Having them there made that week about them. It was so much special than the others.”