2024 ZOZO Championship at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club – Preview

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 Japan’s expansive capital city of Tokyo, the ZOZO Championship is currently the only PGA Tour event held in Asia.

The course is a shorter Par 70 and features narrow tree-lined fairway corridors, six dogleg holes, five par 3s, and smaller-than-average bentgrass greens. It is a course unique to Japanese-style golf. This will be the fifth edition of the ZOZO Championship in Japan.

While last year was quite pleasant, difficult weather conditions affected each of the first three events here. 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. In 2021, cold and rainy conditions made play difficult and the course played a half-stroke over par. 2022’s first round dealt with rainy conditions and the course ended up playing 0.85 strokes under par.

Elite golfers have dominated each of the four years of the ZOZO Championship. After Tiger Woods won the inaugural event in 2019, Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley, and Collin Morikawa have won the three most recent editions.

The Field

At the same course where Tiger Woods earned his 82nd PGA Tour victory in 2019 to tie Sam Snead’s record, Collin Morikawa will return to defend his win from last year. Overall, eight of the top 50 players in the Official World Golf Ranking are committed to the ZOZO Championship, including Japan’s favorite son, and 2021 ZOZO Championship winner, Hideki Matsuyama.

Other notable players in attendance include Xander Schauffele, Sungjae Im, Min Woo Lee, Max Homa, Justin Thomas, and Will Zalatoris. There are currently 67 golfers in the field with the 11 remaining spots in the field to be filled by the top eight available from the Japan Golf Tour’s money list through this week’s Japan Open Golf Championship and three sponsor exemptions restricted to Japan Golf Tour members.

A full 500 FedExCup points will be awarded to the winner. While there are plenty of golfers who are already inside the top 50 of the FedExCup standings which were finalized at the conclusion of the Tour Championship, there remains much to play for. Some in the field will be jockeying for valuable FedExCup Fall points, while others will be looking to nail a spot in “The Next 10”.

Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club – 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.

This 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.

We have partnered with Underdog to bring you an easy way to claim a FREE, no-strings-attached 90 days of Premium Access to Betsperts Golf, plus up to $250 in bonuses when you deposit! Click here to learn more!

Finish Position and Strokes Gained Event History (2019-2023)

This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round in each category. Players are sorted by SG: Total. Accordia Golf Narashino is the 12th least predictive course on Tour.