ZOZO Championship: Bank on Beau at 47/1

• Accurate iron play and hot putting key

• Could Augusta provide clues?

• Read my Genesis Championship preview here

---

Tournament History

This is the only the sixth staging of the ZOZO Championship, an event co-sanctioned between the PGA Tour and the Japan Tour - although it's not an official event for the latter.

Tiger Woods won the inaugural edition (his 82^nd and last victory) but due to the pandemic, the 2020 edition was staged at the Sherwood Country Club in California.

We returned to Japan three years ago to witness a facile victory for the home hero, Hideki Matsuyama, and Keegan Bradley and Collin Morikawa have won the last two editions

The ZOZO Championship is a limited field event with just 78 players contending.

---

Venue

Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club, Inzai, Chiba, Japan

---

Course Details

Par 70, 7,079 yards
Stroke Average in 2023 - 70.51

Narashino CC is a 36-hole facility, made up of two courses called the King and Queen.

The ZOZO Championship is played on a composite of the two with five par threes and five par fives.

Older golf courses in Japan were built with two greens on every hole so golf could be played no matter what time of year. Having two greens meant they could present different strains of healthy grass no matter what the season.

Narashino, which opened in 1965, is one such course, although bentgrass blankets the greens there now and the two green system is no longer necessary.

The greens have as fast as 12.5 on the Stimpmeter for the last two editions and that's slightly faster than the 12 they were set at in 2021 and the 11.5 they ran at five years ago.

To honour the tradition of two greens in Japan, both the A and B greens on the par four fourth hole were used during the inaugural tournament, and they've done the same with the par three fifth since then.

If a golfer lands on the incorrect green, the "wrong green" local rule will be enforced. It will allow the golfer relief off the green no closer the hole and no penalty will be assessed.

The course is tree-lined and fairly narrow and the greens look smaller than average.

---

Weather Forecast

---

TV Coverage

Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at 4:00 on Thursday morning in the UK

---

First six Winners with Pre-event Exchange Prices

2019 - Tiger Woods -19 50.049/1
2020 - Patrick Cantlay -23 44.043/1 (Sherwood CC)
2021 - Hideki Matsuyama -15 14.013/1
2022 - Keegan Bradley -15 36.035/1
2023 - Collin Morikawa -14 16.015/1

---

What Will it Take to Win the ZOZO Championship?

There were no stats produced for the 2021 renewal, but I have read that the winner, Hideki Matsuyama, ranked first for Greens In Regulation and GIR has been an important stat at the other three renewals staged here too.

There were no Strokes Gained statistics produced for either the inaugural edition, or the last two renewals and no Driving Distance stats were produced in 2019 either but here's the top-four and ties from 2019, 2022 and 2023, together with their scores and available stats.

2019
Tiger Woods -19 DA 7 GIR 3 SC 26 PA 2
Hideki Matsuyama -16 DA 29 GIR 7 SC 19 PA 1
Rory McIlroy -13 DA 13 GIR 20 SC 11 PA 12
Sungjae Im -13 DA 47 GIR 39 SC 7 PA 4
Gary Woodland -13 DA 3 GIR 3 SC 4 PA 33

2020
Staged at Sherwood CC

2021
No Stats produced

2022
Keegan Bradley -15 DD 18 DA 23 GIR 3 SC 25 PA 6
Rickie Fowler -14 DD 42 DA 23 GIR 5 SC 23 PA 4
Andrew Putnam -14 DD 70 DA 31 GIR 19 SC 3 PA 19
Emiliano Grillo -13 DD 19 DA 8 GIR 2 SC 48 PA 9

2023
Collin Morikawa -14 DD 15 DA 68 GIR 3 SC 17 PA 2
Eric Cole -8 DD 21 DA 17 GIR 19 SC 30 PA 4
Beau Hossler -8 DD 53 DA 13 GIR 6 SC 21 PA 14
Ryo Ishikawa -7 DD 50 DA 51 GIR 27 SC 39 PA 3
Robby Shelton -7 DD 39 DA 26 GIR 9 SC 16 PA 17

DD Driving Distance
DA Driving Accuracy
GIR Greens In Regulation
SC Scrambling
PA Putting Average

Ranking as high as third and seventh for Greens In Regulation, and second and first for Putting Average, Tiger Woods and Hideki Matsuyama finished the week six and three strokes ahead of the rest in 2019 and those have been the two key stats in each of the last two years.

As many as three of the front four ranked inside the top five for GIR and inside the top ten for PA two years ago, last year's winner, Morikawa, ranked third for GIR and the front two ranked second and fourth for Putting Average.

---

Is There an Angle In?

The cream has risen to the top at Narashino CC and all four course winners to date have been major champions with form at one major venue coming to the fore in every edition here.

With four top-30 finishes from eight starts, Keegan Bradley doesn't have a great record at the US Masters but the man to finish second to him, Rickie Fowler, often plays well at Augusta and the first four home in the inaugural edition here all had strong form at Augusta too.

Tiger Woods and Hideki Matsuyama have both won the US Masters, Rory McIlroy famously traded at long odds-on at the 2011 US Masters and Sungjae Im finished second to Dustin Johnson in 2020 on his first appearance at Augusta National.

Matsuyama went one better and won the event in 2021 and last year's winner here, Morikawa, has Augusta form figures reading 44-18-5-10-3.

Like Narashino, Augusta is tree-lined so anyone that's shown a liking for that course may enjoy this one.

It's also worth looking back to the 2021 Olympics played at the Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama. That too is a traditional tree-lined Japanese course so it's an obvious place to look for clues.

Only Kensei Hirata, who finished tied for sixth, played the par threes better than Morikawa last year, the 2022 runner-up, Fowler, played the short holes better than anyone else, and Woods in 2019 and Matsuyama in 2021 both outscored everyone on the par threes so the Par 3 performance stats might be worth checking out given 20 of the 72 holes played this week are short ones.

---

Winner's Position and Exchange Price Pre-Round Four

2023 - Collin Morikawa - solo fourth, trailing by two 4.84/1
2022 - Keegan Bradley - solo second, trailing by one 3.3512/5
2021 - Hideki Matsuyama - leading by one 1.845/6
2020 - Held at Sherwood CC
2019 - Tiger Woods - leading by three (price unknown)

---

In-Play Tactics

Although he'd led after round one, Morikawa's route to victory was entirely straightforward.

He fell to tied eighth at halfway following a disappointing three-over-par 73 in round two and he was matched at a high of 60.059/1 when he began round three with a double-bogey at the opening hole and a bogey at the fourth.

He looked done and dusted but he finished round three nicely to trail by two with a round to go before cruising to victory with a bogey-free seven-under-par 63.

Tiger won a severely weather interrupted inaugural edition wire-to-wire in 2019, Matsuyama was in front at halfway, having sat second after round one, and Bradley was inside the front three places all week long so although Morikawa and his backers endured a bumpy ride 12 months ago, it may pay to concentrate on the early leaders.

The course ends with one hard hole and one easy one. The long par four 17^th ranked as the hardest hole back in 2019, it was the second toughest in 2021, the fifth hardest in 2022 and the fourth toughest last year, whereas the par five 18^th has been the easiest encountered in each of the four editions staged here and that's well worth bearing in mind if you're trading in-running on Sunday.

With the 17^th half a stroke harder than the 18^th, anyone playing 18, and especially if they've driven and found the fairway, should be favoured over anyone behind them that still has the 17^th to play.

---

Market Leaders

It's been quite a year for the world number two, Xander Schauffele, who's now a two-time major champion after victories in both the US PGA Championship and the Open Championship, but he looks short enough here given we haven't seen him since he finished down the field at the Tour Championship almost two months ago.

A player of Xander's calibre is more than capable of overcoming a bit of a layoff but the fact that he's playing here for a fifth time and that his course numbers only read 10-28-9-38 is also off putting.

The defending champ, Collin Morikawa, is the well-fancied second favourite but I'm happy to swerve him too.

Like Schauffele, Morikawa is teeing it up this week for the first time since the Tour Championship, where he played brilliantly, shooting the lowest 72-hole total when finishing runner-up to the world number one, Scottie Scheffler.

He's going to take some beating if he's in that sort of form again after the lengthy break but it's never easy to defend a title and last year's victory remains his only success since he won the Open back in 2021. It's difficult to make a case for him at a single-figure price.

---

Selections

Home hero Hideki Matsuyama is my idea of the best value at the head of the market but again, we haven't seen the Japanese since the Tour Championship, where he finished tied for ninth, and he's another whose wellbeing is impossible to gauge.

Prior to his top 10 at East Lake, he'd withdrawn at the BMW Championship with injury, a week after he'd won the St Jude Championship, and prior to that he'd won a bronze medal in Paris, so his recent form is as sketchy as his course form which reads 2-1-40-51.

Which Hideki lines up on Thursday is anyone's guess and there's always a chance he'll be hampered by injury but if he's fit and firing, he's a very fair price at 10/111.00 given he's no bigger than 8/19.00 on the High Street. I was happy to have a small bet at that price.

I've got one for the Find Me a 100 Winner column here but for now my only other pick is a very obvious one.

With current form figures reading 12-MC-2-11-23, and course numbers of 16-2, Beau Hossler is hard to ignore.

He's yet to win on the PGA Tour but he's twice been beaten in a playoff, and this looks like a brilliant opportunity for him to get off the mark.

---

Now read my Genesis Championship preview here

---

*You can follow me on Twitter @SteveThePunter

---