Zozo Championship Predictions: Conservative/Aggressive Plays for Every Type of Bettor

Ah, for one week, at least, professional golf is finally back to normal.

This is the way it’s supposed to be: A handful of superstars competing in a small field with no cut and guaranteed paychecks. Just the way they planned it out in the Scottish gorse centuries ago.

Tongue-in-cheek rhetoric aside, this week’s 78-player Zozo Championship returns to Japan, once again at what’s being termed as either Accordia Golf or Narashino Golf Club, depending on your PGA Tour media platform, though be assured they’re the same sub-7,100 yard venue.

Previous winners here include Tiger Woods, Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley and last year’s champion Collin Morikawa, a quartet of big names that suggests a smaller pool of potential ticket-cashers than even those stateside PGA Tour signature events with similar field numbers.

That said, I’m looking outside favorites Xander Schauffele (+450), Morikawa (+700) and Matusyama (+850) for my outright selections. Let’s get to ‘em, as always with plays from both a conservative and aggressive perspective. 

Zozo Championship Outright Bets

Conservative: Max Homa (+5000)

Look, I get it. Prior to taking an extended absence from competition, Homa wasn’t playing anything close to his best golf. And yes, I realize: This “conservative” play is anything but. I do, however, see some specific parallels to last week’s winner, J.T. Poston. Like Poston, Homa doesn’t have a top-25 finish since the Memorial Tournament in June. In fact, the two of them tied for 22nd place that week, following a couple of strong opening rounds with matching scores of 72-76 on the weekend. Poston’s campaign hit the skids shortly thereafter, stalling out at the BMW Championship, where he failed to advance to the season finale. 

Same story for Homa, though unlike Poston, he has competed in one fall event (MC at the Procore Championship) and the Presidents Cup (1-2-0 record, though his strokes gained performance was among the team’s best). It’s difficult for a player to figure out what’s been ailing his game during the rigors of the regular season when one uninspired result can quickly lead to another the next week, then even more. A less consuming schedule, though, can afford the time to rest, relax, and most importantly, reset in autumn tournaments which don’t come with the same pressure – at least for those who have already clinched PGA Tour cards and the golden tickets into next year’s biggest events. 

All of which makes Homa an intriguing option, but the biggest reason to back him this week is simply the price. A proven winner with six career titles at the highest level, he opens the week at the same outright odds as the likes of Patrick Rodgers and Chan Kim, each of whom is still seeking a first career win, and three times the number of Justin Thomas, who’d been similarly inconsistent prior to a lengthy break of his own. 

In a top-heavy field where we’re just hoping to avoid a victory from any of the three single-digit prices at the top of the board, I don’t mind digging a little deeper and making some value plays for outright bets, with more conservative wagers in the finishing position market. Si Woo Kim is very much on this list, as well, and nearly got the full write-up, but instead will simply be part of a card that eschews the shortest prices. 

Aggressive: Ryan Fox (+6600)

In his brief PGA Tour career, Fox has shown flashes of promise, though hasn’t broken that barrier into the rich-get-richer club – you know, the top-50 types who get to play no-cut events for massive sums of cash. At 37 years old, it’s fair to wonder whether he’ll ever make a leap into this echelon, as many would have predicted. Perhaps more glaringly, it’s similarly fair to point out that the New Zealand native has played his best golf away from U.S. soil, posting four wins on the DP World Tour and plenty others around the globe. 

For that reason, I’d rather back him at an international event such as this, even if it does come with PGA Tour sanctioning, than something like the Black Desert Championship or Shriners Children’s Open, where he finished a middling T-46 and T-34, respectively, the past two weeks. Some players enjoy home-cooking and others travel well. We have reason to believe that Fox is among the latter group and a trip overseas should suit him better than others.

Zozo Championship Top-5 Bets

Conservative: Xander Schauffle (-135)

I’m going to offer two very disparate selections in the top-five market. The first is the field favorite – and for good reason. For all the accolades that Schauffele has received this year in winning his first two major championships, I believe he’s still highly underrated. Much of this is likely due to the Scottie Scheffler factor, in that we collectively can’t gush over the world’s second-best player without first giving the best player his just desserts. Beyond those majors, though, what’s been most impressive about Schauffele’s performance this year is his high-level consistency. 

He hasn’t finished outside the top 15 since April, hasn’t finished outside the top 20 since March and hasn’t finished outside the top 25 since February. That’s eight months of leaderboard evidence with a couple of major titles thrown in, which is – again, Scheffler’s performance aside – exactly what we crave from the biggest superstars. 

Since I’m chasing some longer numbers with other wagers this week, I’ll play the ultra-conservative card here and take Xander for what would be his 11th top-five in 22 starts, a rate of 50 percent which actually suggests there’s some value in this short price in a smaller field.

Aggressive: Ryo Ishikawa (+4500)

Prior to last year’s edition of the Zozo Championship, I offered up Ishikawa as a massive longshot outright play and he gave it a valiant effort, posting four scores in the 60s and finishing in a share of fourth place. He’s once again 300/1 in that market and while I certainly will partake in a sniff of that play, I think he owns tremendous value for a recurrence of that top-five result. 

The former PGA Tour phenom had things going this past summer, with a runner-up and a victory in back-to-back starts on the Japan Golf Tour. While he hasn’t quite kept that momentum, a T-8 in his most recent appearance suggests he isn’t too far off. I wrote above about some players traveling well while others prefer home cooking and it’s always been readily apparent that Ishikawa feels most comfortable in his native Japan, on courses he already knows. This feels like a smart place to back him once again in hopes of a repeat performance. 

Zozo Championship Top-10 Bets

Conservative: Kurt Kitayama (+188)

I strongly considered J.J. Spaun for this spot, but I’ll officially go with Kitayama to help prove an evergreen point: If you do your research and back a player and he doesn’t cash for you, there should be some thought toward backing him again, rather than immediately jumping ship. Kitayama was my favorite outright play last week in Las Vegas, and if ball-striking leaders cashed tickets, I’d be flush right now.

Despite leading the field in tee-to-green stats (much like Lucas Glover, whom I’d written about prior to the Black Desert, and Eric Cole, who was second in that category at the Sanderson Farms), a below-average putting performance left him in a share of ninth place at week’s end. I don’t like him as much for another outright play here, considering he’s a shorter opening number in a field that includes bigger stars at the top, but I do believe those ball-striking stats will travel with him on a course where tee-to-green efficiency has proven to be an effective route to success.

Aggressive: Kensei Hirata (+650)

By my count, there are 17 natives of Japan in this 78-player field, though only one (Hideki Matsuyama, of course) who enters the week at shorter than 80/1. That should leave bettors doing a little extra research, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to find reasons to like Hirata, who’s been on an absolute heater this year, with four wins on the Japan Golf Tour in his last 10 starts after a pair of wins last season. 

Still shy of his 24th birthday, I’ll confess to not having observed much from Hirata on the course, but the record suggests that he could be Japan’s next great import into the elite level of professional golf. As if all of this isn’t enough to back him in the top-10 market this week, he finished T-6 at last year’s Zozo, proving that competing amongst some of the game’s biggest stars only fueled his motivation. 

Zozo Championship First-Round Leader Bets

Conservative: Beau Hossler (+3300)

I’ve never been a big fan of repeaters in golf, for the same reason I don’t watch the roulette ball land in a specific number and immediately chase it on the next spin. That said, in both endeavors, lightning can certainly strike twice and I don’t mind taking a chance on Hossler’s opening-round 65 last year happening again this week. 

The fall portion of the schedule has often been his time to shine and it stands to reason that his initial PGA Tour victory could come during this time of year, evidenced by last year’s runner-up finish after that first-round lead and a trio of top-25s in his last three starts this year. His outright number of 28/1 – shorter than Si Woo Kim for some reason – is too short to get me excited, but I do believe a single-round investment makes some sense for a guy with a Thursday scoring average of 66.4 in his last seven starts.

Aggressive: Adam Svensson (+5500)

Just two weeks ago, Svensson posted an opening-round 60 in Utah, never sweating the magic number of 59 because he didn’t realize just how low he was going. Last week, he opened with a 67, but a second-round 73 left him on the wrong side of the cut line. 

A quick look at the stats, though, shows that 12 of the top-14 ball-strikers in Las Vegas finished in the top-20 and Svensson was the lone outlier who missed the cut. That should tell us better things could be right around the corner, and I like a play on a bounce-back round that could mirror the 60 from two weeks ago more than the 73 to close things last week.