ZOZO Championship Best Bets:
“The Postman” delivered on Sunday as J.T. Poston earned his third PGA Tour title winning a wind-delayed Shriners Children’s Open by one stroke over Doug Ghim. Poston, a 40-1 pre-tournament price, held the 54-hole lead and never looked back on Sunday to win after two months off from competition.
Poston will not make the trip to Japan for this week’s ZOZO Championship. After several weeks in the fall without true headliners, the ZOZO field has several elite players this week, including reigning British Open and PGA champion Xander Schauffele (9-2).
Collin Morikawa (7-1) won here last year by six strokes and is back to defend his title.
Hideki Matsuyama (8-1) won in 2021 in his home country.
Like the three players listed above, Sungjae Im (14-1) and Justin Thomas (20-1) have not played tournament golf in about two months.
Sahith Theegala (18-1) finished top 5 here two years ago.
Kurt Kitayama (28-1) finished top 10 in Las Vegas last week and Min Woo Lee (30-1) did the same two weeks ago in Macau.
Beau Hossler (35-1) and Eric Cole (55-1) were co-runners up here last year to Morikawa.
Ghim (40-1), last week’s runner-up, is off his best career PGA Tour finish.
The Event
The ZOZO Championship began in 2019 as the first PGA Tour event ever sanctioned in Japan (co-sanctioned with the Japan Golf Tour). It is held at Narashino Country Club in Inzai, Chiba, Japan, which is about 90 minutes outside of Tokyo. Because of the co-sanctioning with the Japan Golf Tour, there is a sizable contingent of Japanese players in the field.
78 players are in this week’s no-cut field and here is how the field is comprised:
- Top 60 available PGA Tour players from the previous season’s FedEx Cup standings.
- Top 7 players in the current season Japan Golf Tour money list through the Bridgestone Open.
- Top 3 players in the Bridgestone Open.
- 8 sponsor exemptions.
The inaugural ZOZO Championship was won by Tiger Woods in 2019. That win gave Tiger his 82nd PGA Tour victory, which still has him tied with Sam Snead for the most career PGA Tour wins. The 2020 ZOZO was held at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., because of COVID-19 restrictions and concerns in Japan and was won by Patrick Cantlay. The tournament returned to Japan in 2021 and was won by Hideki Matsuyama.
The field consists of only 78 players and there will be no cut.
A full 500 FedEx Cup points will be awarded to the winner. While plenty of golfers are already inside the top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings, which were finalized after the Tour Championship, there remains much to play for. Some in the field will be jockeying for valuable FedEx Cup Fall points, while others will look to nail a spot in “The Next 10.”
The Field
Here are the 78 players teeing it up this week at the ZOZO Championship (courtesy of PGATOUR.com)
The Course
The Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club, which opened in 1965, is just outside of Japan’s sprawling capital Tokyo. Set to the east of the planet’s biggest city near Chiba, Narashino CC has three full sets of 18 holes, namely the King, Kuko and Queen courses.
The ZOZO Championship will play a composite layout on what is a typical Japanese course. The course is a tree-lined parklands, featuring six doglegs and small putting surfaces. Another Japanese golf course design feature is that many of the holes at Narashino feature two greens. ZOZO likes to use this for the tournament, with different greens used on different days, and this will be a feature on the par-4 fourth hole.
The host course Accordia Golf Narashino CC, designed by Kinya Fujita, is a par-70 measuring 7,079 yards. This is the rainy season in Japan, so the course will play soft but also a tad longer than its listed yardage. Unlike most par-70 courses, the course includes five par-3s and three par-5s instead of the customary two par-5s and four par-3s. The front nine is a par-34 and the back nine is a par-36. The par-4s are either short or long with little in between.
The fairways and rough (a non-penal two inches) are Zoysiagrass while the greens are Bentgrass and will roll at an 11 on the stimpmeter. The Bentgrass greens are on the smallish side at an average of 5,500 square feet.
The most unusual feature of the course is that each hole has two greens. If a player finds the wrong green during tournament week, which isn’t in play on the hole, he will get a free drop under a “wrong green” ruling to the nearest point of relief.
Correlated courses include Kasumigaseki (the Tokyo Olympics course), Harbour Town, Colonial, TPC Sawgrass, Waialae, Sheshan International, Nine Bridges, TPC Kuala Lumpur and Chapultepec.
ZOZO Championship Tournament History
2023: Collin Morikawa (-14/266); 11-1; Narashino CC
2022: Keegan Bradley (-15/265); 40-1; Narashino CC
2021: Hideki Matsuyama (-15/265); 16-1; Narashino CC
2020: Patrick Cantlay (-23/265); 28-1; Sherwood CC
2019: Tiger Woods (-19/261); 33-1; Narashino CC
Statistical Analysis
Even without any data, just look at the winners on this course above. Woods, Matsuyama and Morikawa are three of the best iron players in the last 25 years on the PGA Tour, so needless to say, approach is very important at Narashino.
Strokes Gained Approach — Average Per Round (2024 PGA Tour season)
- Tom Hoge 0.759
- Doug Ghim 0.754
- Xander Schauffele 0.700
- Kurt Kitayama 0.565
- Justin Thomas 0.541
- Hideki Matsuyama 0.492
- Si Woo Kim 0.486
- J.J. Spaun 0.473
- Mac Meissner 0.472
- Andrew Novak 0.455
- Jhonattan Vegas 0.399
- Joel Dahmen 0.395
- Adam Svensson 0.380
- David Skinns 0.377
- Lee Hodges 0.363
Driving accuracy is lower at Narashino than the average tour course, but the rough is not all that penal and players can still hit greens missing fairways.
Total Driving — Driving Distance Rank +Driving Accuracy Rank (2024 PGA Tour season)
- Rico Hoey 88 (20 + 68)
- Jhonattan Vegas 102 (8 + 94)
- Patrick Fishburn 105 (22 + 83)
- K.H. Lee 111 (68 + 43)
- Xander Schauffele 112 (38 + 74)
- Chan Kim 120 (85 + 35)
- Min Woo Lee 121 (7 + 114)
- Carson Young 129 (121 + 8)
- Seamus Power 131 (94 + 37)
- Doug Ghim 134 (120 + 14)
Good Drive Percentage (2024 PGA Tour season)
- Patrick Fishburn 86.97%
- Carson Young 86.90%
- Nate Lashley 86.08
- Doug Ghim 86.02
- Collin Morikawa 85.71
- Ryo Hisatsune 85.57
- Chan Kim 85.55
- Ben Kohles 85.52
- Jhonattan Vegas 85.43
- Rico Hoey 85.40
- Andrew Putnam 85.31
- Ben Silverman 84.99
- Joel Dahmen 84.96
- Zac Blair 84.94
- Mark Hubbard 84.69
Hit Fairway Percentage (2024 PGA Tour season)
- Ben Kohles 71.08%
- Collin Morikawa 70.78
- Brendon Todd 69.68
- Carson Young 69.36
- Doug Ghim 67.30
- Zac Blair 66.88
- Nate Lashley 66.54
- Si Woo Kim 66.34
- Joel Dahmen 66.30
- Mark Hubbard 66.25
- Lee Hodges 66.09
- Andrew Putnam 65.81
- Seamus Power 65.20
- Matt Kuchar 65.08
Opportunities Gained compares the amount of times a player hits the ball inside 15 feet on his approach compared with the field average. Essentially this measures the amount of birdie opportunities a player generates.
Opportunities Gained (Last 36 rounds)
- Mac Meissner 36.8
- Doug Ghim 36.2
- J.J Spaun 29.7
- Eric Cole 28.9
- Charley Hoffman 28.6
- Tom Hoge 28
- Joel Dahmen 26.4
- Hideki Matsuyama 23.7
- Kurt Kitayama 23.4
- Collin Morikawa 21.8
- Rico Hoey 19.8
- Carson Young 17.7
- Jhonattan Vegas 17
- Harry Hall 15.9
- Sami Välimäki 15
The average Greens In Regulation at Narashino is only a little over 64%, so players will have to scramble to save pars.
Scrambling (2024 PGA Tour season)
- Xander Schauffele 70.49%
- Hideki Matsuyama 67.93
- Collin Morikawa 65.68
- Ben Silverman 65.01
- Maverick McNealy 64.83
- Ben Griffin 64.70
- Sam Stevens 64.11
- Chan Kim 63.84
- Seamus Power 63.83
- Si Woo Kim 63.62
- Andrew Putnam 63.45
- Nate Lashley 63.29
- Sungjae Im 63.26
Narashino has pure Bentgrass greens.
Strokes Gained: Putting — Average Per Round — Bentgrass Greens (Last 36 rounds)
- Max Greyserman 0.89 (24 rounds)
- Xander Schauffele 0.79
- Harry Hall 0.72
- Victor Perez 0.70 (32 rounds)
- Maverick McNealy 0.57
- SH Kim 0.50
- Beau Hossler 0.49
- Chandler Phillips 0.47 (20 rounds)
- Davis Riley 0.45
- Brendon Todd 0.42
- Rico Hoey 0.42 (26 rounds)
- Patrick Fishburn 0.42 (24 rounds)
- Sungjae Im 0.40
Selections
Kurt Kitayama (25-1, BetMGM)
Kitayama was on the periphery of contention last week at the Shriners but settled for T-9. However, he led the field for Strokes Gained: Tee-To-Green and was second for Strokes Gained: Approach.
He finished T-16 here last year.
Si Woo Kim (35-1, DraftKings)
Kim has missed just two cuts in his 24 starts this year. This has resulted in 12 top-25 finishes, with his best effort coming when fifth in the BMW Championship on his latest PGA Tour start.
The South Korean was also the best performer on the losing International team at the Presidents Cup.
Max Homa (50-1, BetMGM)
Homa was in contention at the Masters before finishing T-3. Two weeks later, he was T-8 at the Wells Fargo. Since then, he has failed to finish in the top 20 in his last 10 events, including three missed cuts.
However, he seemed to make a bit of a turn at the Presidents Cup as he was the best irons player on the victorious USA team despite a 1-2 match record.
Late last season, he traveled to South Africa and won the Nedbank Golf Challenge, so a faraway trip could be what turns him around this year.
Rickie Fowler (75-1, FanDuel)
Fowler failed to post a top-10 in 2024 and then shut it down after the British Open to focus on the birth of his second daughter.
However, he has shown a bit of life on the fall swing, finishing 16th at the Sanderson Farms and then 23rd at the Shriners, where he ranked 16th for Strokes Gained: Approach and eighth for Strokes Gained: Off-The-Tee.
Fowler was runner-up here in 2022 and this event always means a great deal to him because of his Japanese heritage.
Gary Woodland (80-1, Circa Sports)
In two Fall Series starts, Woodland finished 16th in the Sanderson Farms Championship and ninth in last week’s Shriners. He was rated in the top 5 for Strokes Gained: Approach in both starts.
His one appearance here was a fifth in 2019, but he has always played well overseas in these fall events as he was twice the runner-up in Kuala Lumpur for the CIMB Classic.
Placement market and/or matchups will be posted on Wednesday at VSiN.com/picks
