Course Preview and Fits: Zozo Championship

No rest for the weary, as the Dustball Fall™ Road Show heads across the Pacific to Japan for the Zozo Championship, a relatively new small-field event that has featured some heavyweight winners in its first few years. Tiger won the inaugural playing, Patrick Cantlay won the Covid-relocated event in L.A., and Hideki Matsuyama and Keegan Bradley won the last two years. That’s not a bad little winners list! While there are some good names at the top of the field this week, it’s a pretty eclectic group of stars and scrubs, and with no cut, it should make for some interesting lineup decisions. We have no strokes gained data to work with since the event is in Japan, but we have a handful of events to draw on, including the Olympics, which Xander Schauffele won here a few years ago. Okay, let’s dig in.

Accordia Narashino was designed by one of Japan’s most famous golf course architects, Kinya Fujita, and it has a bit of Augusta flavor to it in its lushness and pristine beauty. Playing to a Par 70 and just over 7,000 yards, this is a shorter course by PGA standards, but it’s a bit deceptive and should play a bit longer. The par 3s are quite short, and there are some monster par 4s of almost 500 yards that provide a challenge to even the longer hitters on tour. It’s a peculiar breakdown of holes, with five par 3s, 10 par 4s, and three par 5s, as the championship routing features holes from each of the property’s two courses. Narrow tree-lined fairways are the norm here, and in stark contrast to last week’s Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin, Narashino will present a staunch tee-to-green test, requiring both distance and accuracy. The rainy season in Japan means that the course will play soft, lengthening things a bit more. There aren’t too many penalty strokes, with only five water holes on the course and minimally penal two-inch zoysia rough, but with doglegs and tree trouble lurking, big misses will be punished. Still, distance figures to be most important off the tee, as the narrow fairways could set up for a kind of bomb-and-gouge strategy to work pretty well.

The bentgrass greens here are on the smaller side at about 5,500 square feet, and they should roll very true. I specify the bentgrass greens because there are two sets of greens here on every hole, one set bentgrass and the other a Bermuda/zoysia mix.