Zozo Championship 2022 Overview
A select field of 80 makes the journey to Japan for this week’s Zozo Championship taking place at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club. Hideki Matsuyama heads over to his homeland to defend his title from last year, Hideki also finished runner-up at this course in 2020, it was notable that year when the field was extremely strong that the best ball strikers in the world held the top 5 places, Rory, Tiger, SungJea and Woodland. I expect we will see something similar this week on a course that rewards world-class iron play.
We don’t have the best field lining up this week, not helped by the fact the CJ Cup is back in South Carolina the following week at Congaree Country Club.
The Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club, which first opened its doors in 1965, is a small course with forgiving tree-lined fairways. Two greens per hole are a Japanese practice that arose from a requirement to maintain diverse grasses for changeable weather many years before developments in agrostology. Individual greens, on the other hand, are small, requiring precision short irons and approach shots to set up birdie possibilities. Lines off the tee appear to be rather claustrophobic in this tree-lined layout. There are six doglegs to offer variation, but the rough this week appears to be rather light so could driving distance be more important than accuracy. There are five Par-3 holes and three Par-5 holes on the course. The par 4’s on the course also vary massively. Some par 4’s measure up over 500 yards and others under 400 yards. Bentgrass is used on the putting surfaces which will be a delight for many of the world’s best ball-striker, they are however tiny in size and well-defended by bunkers, so short-game expertise will play its part. Expect to see another low-scoring birdie feast this fall season. I expect this to be another week where the scores are better than 18 under par. Overall a fun course for the players to get stuck into this week.
Let’s see what we have for this week’s key skill sets and picks.
Key Skill Sets Required
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- SG T2G – On a course with little to no data to go off it makes sense to start our key skill set required with the ball striking metric of T2G performance. The fall season is now in its fourth week and I want players in my portfolio who have shown each club in the bag is working to a solid standard. Looking at the 2020 leaderboard it appears to me ball striking is the overriding attribute required to thrive at this track.
- SG Approach play – It struck me as the single biggest factor this week when looking at the leaderboard from 2020 where Tiger was victorious. The top 10 included Tiger, Rory, Sungjea, Conners, Woodland, Xander and Billy Ho, all of which we associated with great ball strikers.
- GIR – 4 of the top 8 players ranked in the top for GIR gained in 2020, I expect similar this week. In addition Given the importance of putting this week, it makes sense to consider players who are hitting plenty of greens in regulation and therefore giving themselves plenty of outside birdie looks and the chance to roll in plenty of putts.
- PAR 3 Scoring – 20 Par 3 holes from 72 face the players this week that’s a whopping 28% of all holes played. It makes sense that we focus on this key skill set. This ties into the overall narrative that iron play is the single most important factor this week, well that is certainly how I’m attacking the week.
- Putting – This week I will be looking for players that show a tendency to put well on the Bentgrass greens, and when making my final picks I will pay close attention to putting performance.
