BLAINE, Minn. The 3M Open opened Thursday at TPC Twin Cities under a mostly sunny sky, the temperature reaching 81 degrees with a light wind out of the south, conditions that offered no excuse to anyone in the field. Ben Kohles used them better than the other 155 players teeing off around him. He played eighteen holes without a bogey, and when he reached the last one, he holed an eagle putt from 4 feet, 4 inches to sign for a 9-under 62. Two strokes separate him from the rest of the leaderboard tonight.
The moment the round turned
Kohles's card did not need a turning point so much as an exclamation mark, and the eighteenth hole supplied it. He hit 17 of 18 greens, found 12 of 14 fairways, and needed only 28 putts, the kind of ball-striking that leaves very little to argue about. The finished number is a career low in 354 rounds on TOUR; his previous best was a 63, a score he had posted twice, most recently in the third round of the 2024 Puerto Rico Open.
What makes the round more than a personal best is what it is the first of. Thursday marks the first time in an individual stroke-play event that Kohles has held or shared the 18-hole lead on TOUR. His best previous position after a first round was a tie for fourth, at this year's Puerto Rico Open, a week that ended in a tie for 42nd. He has stood atop a leaderboard once before, at the 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, but that was a team event, shared with playing partner Patton Kizzire, and it finished in a tie for 28th. This is different: his own name, alone at the top, for the first time.
A five-time Korn Ferry Tour winner, Kohles is still seeking his first PGA TOUR title in what is now his 122nd start. The 3M Open has produced first-time winners before, Lee Hodges in 2023 and Matthew Wolff in 2019 among them, and Kohles arrives with recent form to suggest he belongs in that conversation: a Korn Ferry Tour win in June at the BMW Charity Pro-Am presented by TD SYNNEX, followed by a tie for third at the John Deere Classic in July, two shots back after a final-hole double bogey. He entered this week ranked 100th in the FedExCup standings with three events left before the Playoffs cutoff. A win moves him to 47th.
The players who moved
Three players share second place at 7-under 64, each arriving there by a different road.
Emiliano Grillo tied his own career record for most birdies in a round with nine, a mark he has now reached seven times, most recently at the 2023 American Express on the Pete Dye Stadium Course. This is his seventh trip to the 3M Open, and he has made the cut in five of his six previous appearances here, including three top-10 finishes: a tie for third in 2020, a tie for second in 2022, and a tie for 10th in 2023. Jackson Koivun, playing in just his third start as a professional after earning his card through the PGA TOUR University Accelerated program, matched his own career-low score on TOUR, a 64 he first posted in the second round of last year's John Deere Classic. And Gary Woodland, in his 15th round at TPC Twin Cities across parts of several seasons, produced the lowest 18-hole score he has ever carded on this course; his previous best here was a 66, a number he had reached three times.
Two players carry an added distinction into Friday. Sweden's Jesper Svensson and Grillo, of Argentina, are the only international players among the nine within three strokes of the lead, a reminder of how domestic this leaderboard is early. Only one international golfer has ever won this tournament, Jhonattan Vegas, in 2024.
A first look and a familiar hand
Five players share fifth place at 6-under 65, and the group includes the man who arrived with the week's largest gallery. Scottie Scheffler played a bogey-free 65 in his first competitive round ever at TPC Twin Cities, in his first appearance at the 3M Open. He is the first World No. 1 to tee it up in this event since Brooks Koepka in 2019, who finished 65th that week. Scheffler's own week is measured against a different bar: he leads the TOUR this season in top-10 finishes, top-25 finishes, Strokes Gained: Total, Strokes Gained: Tee to Green, greens in regulation, and scoring average, and he arrived in Blaine off a tie for fourth at The Open Championship, his 10th top-five finish in 16 starts. He is chasing his second win of the season, having already won The American Express, and no player has come remotely close to matching his consistency this year.
He shares the number with Lucas Glover, who is chasing a third consecutive top-five finish after a tie for third at the John Deere Classic and a tie for fifth at the ISCO Championship; with Michael Brennan, the reigning Bank of Utah Championship winner, who sits 105th in the FedExCup and was one of only 14 players to make the cut at all four majors in 2025; and with Kevin Roy, who opened this week with a 65 after closing last year's 3M Open with a 7-under 64 that produced a tie for 28th. Whatever happened here last July, Roy has picked up roughly where he left off.
The uneven defense
Kurt Kitayama's title defense began with a reminder that even a golf course a man has mastered can still bite. The defending champion, who authored a cumulative 36-under across eight rounds here in 2025 including a career-low 60 in the third round, made a triple bogey 7 at the ninth hole on Thursday. He still finished at 3-under 68, tied for 26th, a round that keeps him within range without threatening the leaders. Kitayama has now become the third consecutive 3M Open champion to have entered tournament week ranked outside the top 70 in the FedExCup, after Jhonattan Vegas in 2024 and Lee Hodges in 2023, a run that says something about how differently this tournament and the broader season can treat the same player. He arrived off a tie for 40th at The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.
The two local storylines had a harder Thursday. Thomas Campbell, the 2025 Minnesota PGA Player of the Year, shot 1-over 72, tied for 103rd. Muzzy Donohue, the lefthander who won the 109th Minnesota State Open and is playing his first PGA TOUR event on a sponsor exemption, shot 2-over 73, 119th. Both have three rounds left to make the cut line worth chasing. The field also thinned by one before Friday arrives: Patton Kizzire withdrew after the first round with a back injury.
What tomorrow demands
TPC Twin Cities conceded five rounds of 62 or better a year ago and only a single round in the 80s, and Thursday's leaderboard suggests it will be just as generous this week. A 9-under number leading by only two strokes, with three players tied at 64 and nine within three shots of the top, means Friday is unlikely to separate the field so much as compress it further. Kohles, alone in the lead for the first time in his career, must now do something he has never done: protect one. History offers him little reassurance and no particular threat either. The 3M Open has never gone to a playoff and has never had a repeat winner in its brief run, and the 54-hole leader has converted four of the tournament's seven editions into a title, a hit rate the rest of the TOUR this season has managed in only 10 of 30 stroke-play events. Behind him sits a leaderboard heavy with signature-event pedigree, chief among it the FedExCup leader making his first pass at a golf course that gave up nothing to him on Thursday but pars and birdies. Whatever Kohles built in one round, he will spend the next three finding out if it holds.