The PGA Tour’s only event on Asian soil, the ZOZO Championship, tees off Thursday morning in Japan. It’s important to note that Thursday morning in Japan is Wednesday night stateside, so get your bets in sooner than later this week. Also, this is a 78-man no-cut event, which adds another layer of uniqueness to this event. With seven of the OWGR’s top 20 and 20 of the top 60 making the trip to Japan, this is one of the best fields we’ll see all swing season.
This is the Tour’s third trip to Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club, a relatively short parkland-style Par-70 track with a unique dispersion of holes. Typically, Par 70 courses have four Par 3s, two Par 5s, and 12 Par 4s. However, this course has five Par 3s, three Par 5s, and only 10 Par 4s. They’re also unique in length, with numerous short Par 3s, five Par 4s at 486 yards or longer, plus five more at 425 yards or shorter. This is not a cookie-cutter layout, that’s for sure.
For more course details, check out Ron’s course preview, but here’s an important tidbit:
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.
There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, and my goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week. When pricing out finishing position bets, I’ll often lean towards BetMGM even if there’s a better number elsewhere because of MGM’s advantageous dead-heat rules. Know the rules of the books that you’re betting on, folks!
Please take advantage of the Discord feature and community. It’s the best way to get up-to-the-minute lines and advice, and if you need help getting started, please reach out. That’s where my full card will be posted, along with any live in-tournament bets. Betting markets are fluid, but I’ll note the best number available at the time of this writing.
I’m not sure how I’ll be allocating funds for the swing season yet, but for now, I’m concentrating on outright selections in this space.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074b*Betting lines are accurate at the time of publication.
Noonan’s ZOZO Championship Betting Targets
Xander Schauffele
A small-field no-cut event in Japan? Is there a better spot to back Xander Schauffele than this? He’s at the top of the betting board but also sits atop my statistical weighs on the week as well. We haven’t seen him yet this swing season, but he played excellent golf for the U.S. Team at the Presidents Cup, so I’m not worried about him being out of form.
He’s one of the best drivers in the world, combining distance and accuracy, and he’s among the top three in this field in strokes gained approach no matter how big, or small you make the sample of rounds played. He’s talked openly about how he plays freely and confidently in no-cut events, and it’s bared out in his results.
To Win: +850 BetMGM
Mito Pereira
Another Presidents Cup participant, Mito Pereira, carried that form and confidence over to his first swing season start at last week’s Shriners. He finished T4 after a dominant ball-striking week, gaining nearly nine strokes on approach for the week. That’s too good to pass up here. Unfortunately, we don’t have Shotlink data this week, but we’ve seen exceptional Greens in Regulation performances from Tiger Woods and Hideki Matsuyama during the years they’ve won this championship. Dating back to last February’s Waste Management Open, Mito has gained strokes on approach in 16 of his 18 starts, often gaining more than a stroke per round. It’s the most bankable skill in golf, and Pereira has it in spades.
To Win: 35/1 DraftKings
Sepp Straka
I don’t think there’s a simple answer to golf’s most common handicapping question, form or fit? Personally, I think it’s a golfer-by-golfer thing, and for Sepp Straka, it’s form over everything. The form can get jump-started when he goes to a course that suits his game, as it did at TPC Southwind for the FedEx Cup St. Jude, but it typically continues for a couple of weeks when he’s playing well, and right now, Sepp on is on a heater.
He’s lost in a Sunday afternoon playoff in two of his past four starts, including two weeks ago at Sanderson Farms. The Georgia Bulldog is also comfortable on the Zoysiagrass fairways and rough, which players will see this week, as they’re common in the southeast of the United States. His recent success has been driven by exceptionally accurate drives and dialed-in approaches, something that I’m banking on continuing this week.
To Win: 50/1 DraftKings
FanDuel Finishing Position Parlay
Sungjae Im and Tom Kim- T20 (+164) FanDuel
Unlike most other books I’m familiar with, FanDuel allows you to parlay finishing position bets. Now, the very premise of the bet is flawed because the expected value is negative since players are competing for the same finishing positions. If the bet is two T20s like this one, when one leg of your parlay finishes above the threshold, there’s now one less spot available in that range for the other leg(s) to also come in. I know the math is terrible. Spare me. But let’s be honest. Some bets are just fun, and these are fun for me.
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Featured Image – Rob Carr/Getty Images