DFS Dish: Zozo Championship

The PGA Tour heads to Japan for this week’s Zozo Championship.

One of the first things you may notice is the no-cut nature of the event. There are just 78 golfers pegging it at Narashino Country Club and all of them will be guaranteed four rounds of action, barring any WDs.

For DFS purposes that means we can, in theory, take a more aggressive approach with the bargain bin offering a higher floor. However, in larger contests you still need top performances from all six golfers that you roster so going too aggressive can hinder that upside. Ultimately, our roster construction doesn’t need to change too much compared to the average week. As always, we want to take a quick look at some course-fit metrics to help us find some names to target.

Slopes and Speed

When listening to the pros talk about Narashino Country Club, you hear a lot about the tree-lined nature of the course but also see a lot about the small, tricky greens.

Xander Schauffele said this on his first visit, “the greens are slopier than I anticipated. I’m not going to lie, I putted it off like three or four greens in the practice round, which was a little shocking.”

Brendan Steele added the following in 2021, “The complexes, the most similar thing that I would say is to Augusta with how much slope they have and the speed.”

He hasn’t been the only golfer to bring up Augusta National when talking about the slopes and speed of the greens so let’s have a look at top performers on courses with similar, speedy surfaces.

Here are the top performers in adjusted strokes gained per round when playing on courses with fast greens, over the last two years:

Xander Schauffele
Collin Morikawa
Keegan Bradley
Hideki Matsuyama
Sungjae Im
Ben Griffin
Rickie Fowler
Sahith Theegala
Taylor Montgomery
Beau Hossler
Alex Noren
Min Woo Lee
Keith Mitchell
Justin Suh
Kurt Kitayama

We can also look at performance versus baseline to see who shows the largest increase in performance compared to their typical scores:

Ben Griffin
Kurt Kitayama
Keegan Bradley
Beau Hossler
Justin Suh
Austin Eckroat
Hideki Matsuyama
Sam Stevens
Adam Schenk
Taylor Montgomery
Thomas Detry
Eric Cole
Sahith Theegala
Lee Hodges
Dylan Wu

Overlap List: Names that show up on both lists include Keegan Bradley, Hideki Matsuyama, Ben Griffin, Sahith Theegala, Taylor Montgomery, Beau Hossler, Justin Suh, and Kurt Kitayama.

Bradley is the defending champ and Matsuyama has a win and runner-up finish on his course resume. Could one of the other names find the podium by week’s end?

Hossler to stay hot in Japan

The 28-year-old Texan arrives with top-20 finishes in four of his last seven starts including a T-7 last week in Las Vegas. Looking at his season-long stats, his off-the-tee game has really been elevated and his short game has always stood up with the best in the world. He twirled a T-16 finish last year in his course debut and could easily match or exceed that finish given the state of his game right now.

Post-hype breakout for Suh?

You could look at that headline a few ways. Suh was one of the top amateurs in the world during his time at USC but battled injury right when he made the leap to the pro ranks. He was expected to shine alongside the likes of Matthew Wolff and Collin Morikawa but may finally be coming into his own now after the hype has flipped from boil to a simmer. The other post-hype breakout would be in a shorter timeframe. Suh had a home game last week at TPC Summerlin and had to sneak through the cutline before posting a ho-hum weekend tally, finishing in a share of 56th place. Sometimes playing at home can ramp up personal expectations and off-the-course obligations with friends and family. Perhaps a week later he will relieve some of that pressure and get the job done on a course he’s seeing for the first time.