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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more course details, check out Ron’s<\/a> course preview<\/a>, but here’s an important tidbit: <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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! <\/p>\n\n\n\n