The Tour is in Blaine, Minnesota this week for the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities — an Arnold Palmer design, par 71, 7,431 yards of prairie golf built through wetlands and lakes. It's one of the last true birdie-fests on the calendar.

Don't let the water fool you — this course concedes scores. Kurt Kitayama won at 23-under last year in a week that saw five rounds of 62 or better, and he's back to defend.

The headline: Scottie Scheffler is making his 3M Open debut, the first world No. 1 to tee it up here since Brooks Koepka in 2019. A sleepy late-July stop just became appointment viewing.

Seven editions, five different champions, zero repeat winners. This tournament has been a launching pad, not a coronation — which is exactly what makes Scheffler's presence so interesting.

The course identity rewards aggression off the tee and nerve on the closing stretch — the par-5 18th wraps around water and has flipped this leaderboard more than once. TPC Twin Cities punishes the timid, not the wild.

The human story: for the nine top-50 players in the field, this is a FedExCup positioning week. For everyone else, it's a career-changer — Lee Hodges turned a seven-shot Sunday stroll here into a Tour life.

Tactically, watch the wind. Calm mornings in Minnesota mean 62s; an afternoon breeze off the wetlands is the only defense this course has. Coverage runs Thursday–Sunday on Golf Channel and CBS.

Golf in the Twin Cities means one thing here: Minneapolis, pound for pound the most underrated music city in America. The lineage is absurd for a metro its size.

Start with the obvious — Prince. But go past Purple Rain and into the geography: Paisley Park is open for tours, and the whole city reads like liner notes to his catalog.

Before Prince, there was Dylan. He left Hibbing for the Dinkytown folk scene near the University of Minnesota, and a 19-year-old Dylan was captured on the legendary "Minneapolis Party Tape" before anyone knew the name.

The venue that binds it all is First Avenue — the black building with the silver stars painted on the outside, one for every act that mattered. It's the CBGB that never closed.

The 80s gave Minneapolis two parallel dynasties: The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, sloppy genius and furious precision coming out of the same few blocks. Nobody has ever sounded more like their city.

The quiet empire: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis got fired from Prince's orbit, opened Flyte Tyme Studios, and produced Janet Jackson's entire imperial run from a Minneapolis suburb. The Minneapolis Sound conquered pop radio without leaving home — the full map is here.

Your homework: one Replacements record (Let It Be), one deep Prince cut ("Sometimes It Snows in April"), and one Atmosphere album — Rhymesayers built one of the great independent hip-hop labels in the same city. Three eras, one zip code.

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Forget the destination dining this week — late July is the one stretch of the year when the best restaurant in America is a farm stand. Sweet corn, tomatoes, peaches, and watermelon all peak right now, and they need almost nothing done to them.

The rule of peak summer: the shorter the ingredient list, the better the cook. A July tomato with salt embarrasses most $40 entrées.

Sweet corn is the pilgrimage item. Buy it the day it was picked, grill it in the husk, and understand why every July produce guide leads with it.

Georgia peaches are in their final great weeks — Pearson Farm in Fort Valley has been doing this since 1885, and a ripe Elberta eaten over the sink is a top-five food experience, period.

The grill is the summer kitchen. One move to steal: burn hot and fast on proteins, then throw halved peaches or corn on the dying coals while you eat — dessert and tomorrow's lunch cook themselves.

If someone has a full week, eat the season in order: farmers market Saturday morning, tomato sandwiches Monday, corn Tuesday, peach cobbler Friday. The July calendar is the menu.

The Atlanta parallel writes itself — this is our season. Miller Union's vegetable plate is peak-summer Georgia on white tablecloth, a King of Pops cart is the same idea on a stick, and Fox Bros brisket next to July corn is the best backyard plate in the city. Same conversation, different price points — Georgia's seasonal calendar is the cheat sheet.

Forget the destination dining this week — late July is the one stretch of the year when the best restaurant in America is a farm stand. Sweet corn, tomatoes, peaches, and watermelon all peak right now, and they need almost nothing done to them.

The rule of peak summer: the shorter the ingredient list, the better the cook. A July tomato with salt embarrasses most $40 entrées.

Sweet corn is the pilgrimage item. Buy it the day it was picked, grill it in the husk, and understand why every July produce guide leads with it.

Georgia peaches are in their final great weeks — Pearson Farm in Fort Valley has been doing this since 1885, and a ripe Elberta eaten over the sink is a top-five food experience, period.

The grill is the summer kitchen. One move to steal: burn hot and fast on proteins, then throw halved peaches or corn on the dying coals while you eat — dessert and tomorrow's lunch cook themselves.

If someone has a full week, eat the season in order: farmers market Saturday morning, tomato sandwiches Monday, corn Tuesday, peach cobbler Friday. The July calendar is the menu.

The Atlanta parallel writes itself — this is our season. Miller Union's vegetable plate is peak-summer Georgia on white tablecloth, a King of Pops cart is the same idea on a stick, and Fox Bros brisket next to July corn is the best backyard plate in the city. Same conversation, different price points — Georgia's seasonal calendar is the cheat sheet.

We're inside six weeks, so this section is all college football until the pads pop. The story of the 2026 season is Lane Kiffin at LSU — he left Ole Miss for the rival, hauled in the No. 1 transfer portal class in the country, and opens at home against Clemson on Labor Day weekend. No coach has ever bought himself less patience.

Indiana is your defending national champion — 16-0, a title, and then they lost their Heisman-winning quarterback. The Hoosiers reloading through the portal instead of collapsing is the real test of whether 2025 was a program or a lightning strike.

The coaching carousel was a demolition derby: 33 changes, 17 at the power-conference level — Matt Campbell to Penn State, Kyle Whittingham to Michigan, James Franklin resurfacing at Virginia Tech. Half the sport's sidelines are new.

Circle September 12: Ohio State at Texas. Julian Sayin against Arch Manning in Austin, two blue bloods coming off seasons that felt like failure at 10 wins — it's the biggest regular-season game on the calendar.

The quarterback class is loaded at the top — CJ Carr at Notre Dame, Manning in year two as the guy, Dante Moore at Oregon. The SEC preview reads like a Heisman ballot.

The season starts in our backyard: the Aflac Kickoff brings Auburn–Baylor to Mercedes-Benz Stadium on September 5. Atlanta remains the sport's true capital — the season opens here and, if the Dawgs have their way, runs back through here in December.

And Georgia: Kirby held court at SEC Media Days as the dean of the league's coaches, and the Dawgs sit squarely in the contender tier. The path is the same as always — win the East-that-no-longer-exists, survive the November gauntlet, and be playing their best when the bracket drops.

The golf is in Minnesota, but your late-July flight should land somewhere else: Traverse City, Michigan, the freshwater answer to coastal summer towns — and right now is the two-week window the whole town exists for.

The anchor for this trip isn't a tee time, it's the water — Grand Traverse Bay runs Caribbean-blue in late July, and everything else gets built backwards from it.

The architecture: fly into Cherry Capital Airport (TVC), base downtown near Front Street, and give yourself Thursday night to do nothing but walk to dinner and the bay. The two-day core itinerary handles the rest.

Friday is Sleeping Bear Dunes — 400-foot sand bluffs dropping straight into Lake Michigan, about 40 minutes west. Do the dune climb before 10 a.m., then lunch in Glen Arbor like you earned it.

Saturday, drive M-22 through the Leelanau Peninsula — wineries, roadside cherry stands, and small towns like Suttons Bay that visitors blow past on their way to nowhere better. It's one of the great summer drives in America.

The underrated move: Old Mission Peninsula, the other peninsula, splitting the bay from downtown to a lighthouse at the 45th parallel. Half the crowds of Leelanau, same water, same wine.

Same principle as always: the best trips are built backwards from a single anchor, not from a city brochure. This week the anchor is a Great Lake in the two weeks it pretends to be an ocean.

The pros in Blaine this week are walking 7,400 yards a day in July humidity — four straight days of it. The difference between their front nine and back nine isn't talent, it's conditioning.

So this week, an actual workout — no walking assignment. Three rounds, minimal gear, 20 minutes, built around the movements that actually transfer to golf: hinge, rotate, carry.

The circuit: 15 kettlebell swings, 12 goblet squats, 10 push-ups, 8 medicine-ball rotational throws per side, and a 45-second plank. Rest 90 seconds, repeat three times, done before your coffee's cold.

The swings are the engine. Kettlebell work builds the hip hinge that powers a golf swing, a deadlift, and getting out of a chair at 80 — one movement, three decades of return.

No med ball? Swap in slow rotational chops with the kettlebell — rotational strength is the most neglected pattern in most people's training and the most important one in golf.

Scale it honestly: knees down on push-ups, lighter bell, longer rest. The version you'll actually do three times a week beats the version you'll do once and abandon — progression plans here.

The unsexy truth, as always: nobody gets fit in October for October. The swings you grind out in July humidity are what hold up your back nine — and your fall — when everyone else is gassed.