As the calendar season for the PGA Tour heads down the final stretch, 78 golfers will make the trip to the Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club for this no-cut event. Set just outside of Japan’s expansive capital city of Tokyo, the ZOZO Championship is currently the only PGA Tour event held in Asia.
The course plays as a shorter Par 70 and is a super-tight, heavily tree-lined course with six doglegs, five Par 3 holes, and smaller-than-average bentgrass greens. It is definitely a course unique to Japanese-style golf. This will be the third edition of the ZOZO Championship in Japan. The weather has affected both events here at this course. Back in 2019, the course played slightly under par but had to deal with the remnants of a monsoon and was inundated with six inches of rainfall. Then last year, cold and rainy conditions made play difficult and the course played a half-stroke over par.
This is the same course where Tiger Woods earned his 82nd PGA Tour victory in 2019 to tie Sam Snead’s record. Japan’s favorite son, and 2021 ZOZO Championship winner, Hideki Matsuyama returns home and headlines the field as he looks to defend his title from last year. Overall, seven of the top 20, and 20 of the top 60 ranked players in the world will be in attendance.
Tokyo Olympics gold medalist and fifth-ranked player in the world, Xander Schauffele is the highest-rated player in the field. He excels in no-cut events and has family roots in Japan. Other high-ranked players in the field include Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Cameron Young, and Sungjae Im. Also making the trip over to Asia is two-time PGA winner, Tom Kim, who just won the Shriners Open this past week. With the event being co-sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour Organization, there will be more than a dozen golfers from that Tour in the field.
Course History
Opened in 1965 in Chiba, Japan, Narashino CC is a very traditional Japanese design. It has 3 full 18-hole courses. It was designed by Kinya Fujita, one of the premier course architects during the height of the Japanese golf boom in the decades following World War II.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bThis brings us to a quick lesson on Japanese golf courses. With these venues so heavily utilized by the people of Japan, combined with the ever-changing seasonal weather, multiple greens are used to limit foot traffic and also match the current season. With cooler weather setting in, bentgrass greens will be used this week instead of the bermuda greens. During this week’s tournament, if a player’s ball lands on the wrong green, he will get a free drop off of the putting surface.
Almost all urban and suburban golf courses in Japan are tree-lined tracks with tight fairways. Japanese architects like Fujita attempted to hide as much of the urban sprawl as possible by surrounding each hole with swaths of trees to allow citizens to escape their everyday lives in a fresh environment. In general, holes are designed to keep golfers from hitting over the top of them. Therefore, dogleg corners cannot be cut across by the bigger hitters off the tee.
Narashino has hosted many top-level events over the years, including the Japan Open, the Japan PGA Championship, and the Japan Airlines Open. It was also the venue for the popular Suntory Open between 1974 and 1997.
The Course
A par-70 course that measures just past 7,000 yards, Narashino CC is on the shorter end of the length spectrum. It will play longer than its yardage, however, due to its layout and the cooler and wetter conditions. As mentioned above, the tree-lined fairways are similar to Colonial Country Club and are very thick, making it near impossible for players to cut corners on the numerous doglegs. Nevertheless, with the fairways not getting much rollout along with some very long par-4s, there are more drivers used off the tee than one would surmise.
For the most part, this is a positional golf course where players try to keep their ball on the correct side of the fairway for the best angle of attack into the smaller-than-average greens. With the course playing at a combined even-par over the first two events, birdies will come at a premium.
Along with the bentgrass greens, Narashino CC features Zoysia fairways and rough. While there are only a few PGA Tour courses that feature Zoysia, it is known for being firm and having a “bouncy” nature. It also tends to sit higher on the grass and doesn’t get buried as much as other types of rough. And with the rough being cut at only two inches, players don’t seem to have much trouble in attacking these greens when missing the fairway. It is the trees and strategically-placed fairway bunkers that give the most problems.
This week’s tournament will take place on a composite course using holes from the club’s King and Queen courses. It has a very unique layout design and should provide a decent test for players. One of the ways it is different from normal PGA Tour courses is the hole breakdown. Typically, Par 70 courses have only four Par 3s, two Par 5s, and 12 Par 4s. This course has five Par 3s, three Par 5s, and only 10 Par 4s.
The oddities do not stop there. As you can see on the course scorecard above, there are five Par 4s at 486 yards or longer and five more at 425 yards or shorter. The five long Par 4s will require a longer iron into the greens and are five of the six toughest holes on the course playing to a 4.22 scoring average. The shorter Par 4s, with wedges in hand on approach, include some of the best birdie opportunities and have a 3.96 scoring average. While the Par 5 14th hole measures at 608 yards and is one of the toughest Par 5s on Tour, the other two Par 5s have a birdie or better rate of 46.4%.
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
First off, keep in mind that there is no Strokes Gained data in Japan for this event. Because of that, much of what I am basing this section on will be more anecdotal and also using traditional golf stats.
With narrow corridors, and doglegs, and trees on all sides, it would make sense that accuracy off the tee would be essential here at Narashino CC. The data does show that fairway accuracy is only 54% compared to the Tour average of 61%. The numbers also show that when missing the fairway a Tour-average number of players can still hit the green in regulation. This is because the rough is not that penal.
But when we dig deeper into the numbers, the top 10 players in Driving Accuracy in last year’s event had an average finish position of 35th. And remember, this is out of 78 total golfers. Back in 2019, the average finish position was 33rd. While we do not have Driving Distance for this event, DataGolf’s course fit tool shows that Narashino CC favors players with distance off the tee. Having shorter irons into the longer Par 4s is definitely an advantage. And with a Greens in Regulation (GIR) rate of 64.4%, players are fully capable of hitting these small greens from the rough.
So in order to capture the most important parts of the “off the tee” game for this course, I will be highly emphasizing both Total Driving and Good Drive % in my model this week. Avoiding the heavily-wooded areas and finding the proper angle to approach the greens seems to be the best strategy.
Approach
On approach, players will see the 13th-smallest greens on Tour at 5,500 square feet on average. Elite ball-strikers who can play positional golf and attack these pins are the best fits for this course. Needless to say, we don’t even need data to see that the previous two winners on this course, Tiger Woods and Hideki Matsuyama, are two of the greatest iron players of all time. Both led the field in GIR% by a large margin in their wins. Based on the yardage totals for each hole, it appears that around 43% of approach shots will come from the mid-to-long iron range of 175-225 yards.
Around the Green and Putting
The short game should definitely not be ignored this week. With only an average GIR rate of 64.4%, everyone will have opportunities to scramble for par – whether from the rough or from the numerous bunkers that surround the greens. Both Sand Save % and Scrambling % are slightly easier than average here at Narashino CC.
As for putting, these will be some of the purest bentgrass greens anywhere. The Japanese take extreme pride in the maintenance of their green surfaces. While the first two leaderboards have been littered with good and bad putters alike, we do know that the GIR Putting Average is 7% tougher than average. Because of the smaller greens, Three-putt Avoidance is higher than average. Players will definitely need to take advantage of their birdie opportunities. And on a challenging course without a putting contest, golfers who struggle with their flat stick can easily make up for it by giving themselves quality chances with elite ball striking, much like Hideki Matsuyama did last year.