2022 Zozo Championship: PGA Tour Golf Betting Odds
This week’s Zozo Championship is the only PGA Tour sanctioned event in Japan. Xander Schauffele is favoured on the golf odds just like he was last year.
The Zozo Championship has only been around since 2019 and is a limited-field event of 78 players – including a handful of guys from the Japan Golf Tour as it is co-sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour Organization – with no cut. The 2019 and 2021 events were held in Japan, but the 2020 tournament shifted to California because of the COVID pandemic. Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba (east of Tokyo) is the host and is a par 70 at about 7,079 yards. Approximately 40 yards have been added.
Narashino is among a series of courses in Japan that still upkeep two greens on every hole. In 2021, the two-green treatment was used on the fifth hole, a par 3 measuring 205 yards to the left green and 202 yards to the right. This will continue in 2022. No. 14, a par 5 at more than 600 yards, saw scores with an average of 0.003 over par last year. That made it the third-hardest par 5 during the 2021-22 PGA Tour season behind No. 18 at TPC Twin Cities (3M Open) and No. 15 at the Nicklaus Tournament Course (The American Express).
Tiger Woods tied Sam Snead’s PGA Tour record with his 82nd (and last) career victory here in 2019. Patrick Cantlay was the winner two years ago in the USA and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama won last year, shooting 15-under 265 to beat out Brendan Steele and Cameron Tringale by five shots.
Zozo Championship Golf Odds
World No. 6 Xander Schauffele is the highest-ranked player in the field and +800 favourite. He finished T28 last year at even par. This is his first PGA Tour event of the new season, but he was Top 5 in his final two last season. Sungjae Im is +900. He didn’t play the tournament last year but was T3 in 2019.
Defending champion Hideki Matsuyama is +1100 with Tom Kim at +1200, Collin Morikawa +1400, Cameron Young +1400 and Viktor Hovland +1600. Matsuyama clearly is a “horse for the course” as in addition to his 2021 win in this event, he was a runner-up in 2019. Kim is making his tournament debut. Morikawa was T7 last year. Young is making his event debut, and Hovland has a best result of T41 in it.
No Canadians have won this event. Corey Conners is +2000, He was T8 in 2020 and T6 in 2019 but didn’t play last year. Mackenzie Hughes is +3900 and comes off a win two weeks ago at the Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi. He was T4 last year. Adam Svensson is +6800 as he makes his tournament debut. Conners is -118 as the top Canadian with Hughes at +200 and Svensson at +320.
On the winning nationality prop, the USA is +100 with rest of the world +125 and a European at +475.
Zozo Championship Golf Predictions
Will take Hideki Matsuyama for a Top 10 and Corey Conners as the top Canadian. The winner at +2500 is Keegan Bradley. He was T13 in 2019 and T7 last year.
