RADIO
Welcome to the tournament that possesses easily the best field of players in the entire Fall swing season, the 2024 ZOZO Championship. The tournament will be held for the 6th consecutive time at Narashino Country Club in Japan on the outskirts of Tokyo on a beautiful composite course made up for the pros from the three different courses featured at this club.
The color and condition of this course are always spectacular. You notice a different hue of green on these zoysia fairways which contrast perfectly with the ancient looking trees that make up this typical parkland-style layout. It has a unique character and has proven challenging over the years with an impressive list of previous champion in it's first five years as host venue.
Let's break down everything you need to know about Accordia Golf Narashino CC and how we can isolate certain player attributes that I believe are best suited for a high likelihood of success this week. I hope this piece can be a FREE and easy read to start your prep week. Let's dig into the course!
An Introduction to Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club
Located just outside the bustling city of Tokyo, Narashino County Club was created as a modern upscale golf club in 1976 by Japanese course architect Kinya Fujita. The club quickly evolved into one of Japan's premier courses and was selected to host Japan's very first PGA Tour event in 2019, marking a milestone for golf in this region. It also helps when Tiger Woods shows up and proceeds to win the inaugural event.
Japan has a great golf culture. Their courses typically have a solid blend of traditional Parkland elements with a mix of modern innovations that are definitely unique. One of the most notable characteristics is of course the dual greens, originally created to help the course cope with drastic seasonal changes in the weather, but now also utilized as a cool feature to add complexity to the design an help maintain year-around perfect greens.
You will notice immediately the abundance of trees that encapsulate the property and line almost every hole. On TV, it feels a bit like they are weaving through the woods in the middle of nowhere. The course provides a great variety of holes. Some are intended to play easy, providing mild pressure to produce scoring opportunities, while others are tough and demanding.
It's a fantastic course and great tournament that again features a shorterned field with a no-cut component. 78 players in total are set to tee it up this week for the $8.5 million dollar purse that is the largest tournament of the Fall swing. This has become the premier event between the Tour Championship and the start of the new year so let's enjoy it and see if we can find the winner!
18 holes.
36 greens.All 18 holes at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club have two greens, a common practice in Japan. pic.twitter.com/j1BJxDGF0y
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) October 23, 2019
Scorecard:
Course Specs
I'll start with a tip of the cap to whoever created the composite layout of courses because they did a great job of providing a huge variety in length and difficulty on the par 4's. Far too often they become monotonous 440-yard holes that repeat over and over. At this course, they have four short par 4s that are under 405 yards which includes the first two holes. There are also five very difficult par 4s that range from 486 to 505 yards.
The trees create a corridor-like feel bordering the fairways but I believe they are more forgiving than they appear. Driving accuracy is important because players can find major trouble with errant misses. The leaderboards have been eclectic in terms of different skill sets, but this is ultimately a course that accentuates great ball striking.
In the first five years, the Champions have been Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley, and Collin Morikawa. That is essentially a list of the best ballstrikers in the world at the time. The rough is no issue, and the best players in the world are able to successfully separate themselves based on long iron play which comes firmly into play on those difficult par 4s.
The greens are small in size, and we mentioned that each hole does have a dual green setup component. They are made up of Bentgrass and heavily contoured in spots given the magnitude. Small targets only increase the importance of precise iron play. There is a decent amount of bunkering and some of them nearly cut directly into the greens. Water comes into play on four holes.
Statistical Considerations
After five years of data from this event, I was surprised to see that Driving Distance has been the most important trait of this course relative to an average PGA Tour course. When you look at the last two champions in Morikawa and Bradley, I'm inclined to believe that accuracy also plays a role but I think we often underestimate how far Morikawa and Bradley hit it consistently.
There's no shotlink, so the data sites are doing their best to depict what they believe is most important. For me, it has to be Ball-striking. I have weighted it at nearly 30% of my stat model this week. It has become the truest measurement of form in my opinion and here are the top 10 players in strokes gained Ball-striking over the last 24 rounds played:
- Mac Meissner
- Doug Ghim
- Kurt Kitayama
- Xander Schauffele
- JJ Spain
- Max Greyserman
- Hideki Matsuyama
- Ben Silverman
- Charley Hoffman
- Chan Kim
Incoming short-term form is important, particularly based on where this event falls on the schedule. The list of champions is incredible, including Tiger Woods who came out of no form in 2019 when he won here. As we know, Woods is always the exception. The other four winners have also posted an 8th or better result in their previous three starts coming into this event before they won.
Morikawa won this event by six shots last year and bested the field average by 16. While we don't have his approach shot ranges and strokes gained data, we know where Morikawa excels. It is with his approach play from 150-225 yards, which is still arguably the best in the world. Matsuyama is another one of the best from long-range approach play, and he hit one of the best shots I have ever seen here when he won given the pressure circumstances.
🚨 Just 10 days to go until Hideki’s return at the ZOZO Championship! Really looking forward to seeing him back out on the course.
Here was Shota discussing his win in 2021 👇pic.twitter.com/DqUhNwqyPk
— TRACKING HIDEKI (@TrackingHideki) October 9, 2023
Good luck and enjoy the 2024 ZOZO Championship!
