Woo Jeong Hills takes over as host venue for the Genesis Championship, the final event of the DP World Tour regular season before two more in the Middle East determine the final shape of the Race to Dubai.

We'll come to the course in a moment, but first an uncomfortable truth: this is meant to be where the battle for 2026 cards reaches its crescendo, yet several of the players involved in it cannot get a game. There are 36 Korean Tour players ahead of them in the queue and others, including some of the biggest names in the field, who parachute in for a lucrative opportunity that will not change their careers.

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that this used to be better and it's most unfortunate that, come Sunday, we might not get the drama we crave. Yes, it was in this event that a closing par earned Marco Penge status for what's proven to be a career-changing year, but that shouldn't hide the fact that too many players with status have simply not been given a fair crack at establishing themselves on the circuit this year.

Personally, I'm for a smaller, leaner Tour, which is what we appear to be heading towards. However many cards there are available through Qualifying School and the HotelPlanner Tour, they need to be meaningful, substantive; to give those players clarity and the ability to build a schedule. This year, some have faced the thankless task of earning sufficient Race to Dubai points from a dozen or so of the least valuable tournaments. That's just not sustainable.

The other, compounding factor is the presence of those better players who do not really play DP World Tour schedules. Last year, around a third of the available Race to Dubai points were taken off the table by the first two home, Ben An and Tom Kim. Penge, Ricardo Gouveia and Ivan Cantero did so well to feed off the remaining scraps but 12 months on, it's likely that the 5,000 points that are theoretically to play for remain theoretical; that in fact, there might be 3,000 at best.

None of this should be seen as criticism of the Tour's leadership, who I imagine would much rather have stuck to the Portugal Masters and something wholly more satisfying from a competitive standpoint, and it's to their credit that both Q-School and the HotelPlanner Tour are being slimmed down in 2026. That will have been a difficult, not universally popular decision, and it was surely a necessary one.

Onto the course, then. Woo Jeong Hills might reasonably claim to be the toughest in Korea, built by the son of Pete Dye to resemble a 'big, brutish, US tournament course' according to one reviewer. It is pretty in-your-face with undulating fairways, thick rough, narrow fairways, big bunkers, and a dozen water hazards. Its 13th hole is modelled on the 17th at Sawgrass, only about a hundred yards longer.

In 21 renewals of the Korean Open, 11 were won in a single-digit under-par score. Seungsu Han won in six-under but by six shots two years ago. Rickie Fowler reached 16-under for his professional breakthrough, with Rory McIlroy six behind him. That was perhaps the easiest renewal yet, with others having largely been tough. Little wonder that proven class has therefore counted, with PGA Tour winners KH Lee and Sung Kang both two-time champions along with major champion YE Yang.

It is a tad difficult to tie these winners together otherwise, but at their best Lee and Kang were both solid drivers and Yang is an accurate one. This 7,367-yard par 71 probably doesn't play as long as it looks as plenty of that number comes from three tough par-threes, but I do think driving will be key, as it also opens up the scoring chances on three mid-range par-fives and two short par-fours.

As such, I'm willing to chance SUNGJAE IM, who has been a reliably excellent driver since first arriving on the PGA Tour: relentlessly accurate but by no means short, and always inside the top 20 percent.