Prior to last year's ZOZO Championship, there were understandable concerns that it would not be able to deliver as it had pre-pandemic, on its first and only trip to Japan. Back then, Rory McIlroy, HIDEKI MATSUYAMA, Jason Day and Tiger Woods got the week started with a skins game and Woods finished it with a dazzling victory, the 82nd of his PGA Tour career to tie Sam Snead's record. To round things off, it was Matsuyama who took second, with McIlroy third.
Two years on, Woods unable to play and McIlroy absent from the field, it was left to Matsuyama plus two players with Japanese heritage, Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa, to do their best to salvage the tournament. Matsuyama did more than that. Six months on from making history in the Masters, he opened with a round of 64, took the lead after round two, and eventually stretched clear to win by five after a closing eagle.
Filling the shoes of Woods is an impossible task, except if you're Hideki Matsuyama, you're the reigning Masters champion, you're back home in Japan, and you do what he did. It was a phenomenal performance, the kind he'd not always seemed capable of for all his awesome talents, and echoed those of Adam Scott when he took his Green Jacket back home to Australia in 2013.
Asking for a repeat almost feels cheeky, and this field is slightly stronger at the front end thanks to Sungjae Im and Tom Kim, the latter arriving on the back of his second win in less than two months and now firmly established as an elite player at just 20 years old. Add Cameron Young and Viktor Hovland, plus the latter's Ryder Cup teammates Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton, and this is one of the better end-of-year events despite a limited field and no cut.
But Matsuyama is capable and, given the manner of his win here last year, I think he's a bet at 12/1 and bigger. Remember, he didn't just win by five, but the two players tied for second were the only ones who got within eight of him. Matsuyama beat the rest of the field by more than two strokes per day, and across these two renewals of the ZOZO only a sublime Woods performance has been too good for him.
His form coming in last year was unspectacular and this time, perhaps wisely, he's skipped the Shriners meaning he'll be fresher than those who arrive off that plane – Im, Kim, Si-Woo Kim, Mito Pereira, Cam Davis, Maverick McNealy, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Tom Hoge among them.
I also felt he played well at the Presidents Cup, better than his results having faced the two strongest US pairings in three of his matches, and been let down more than once by a partner. His dramatic half against Sam Burns confirmed his game to be in good shape – theirs was one of the pick of the singles matches – and the fact that he was able to feature in every session suggests we can rely on his health, too.
It's been a really impressive year for the American, who threatened to win a couple of times during his rookie PGA Tour campaign and showed his versatility in doing so, taking third in the tough Honda Classic and second in the low-scoring Mexico Open before finishing runner-up again in Scotland.
Adaptability is also something he's shown in his young career, defying strong winds in Oman, and before establishing himself on the DP World Tour he played out in the Far East, winning in Malaysia on his first Asian Development Tour start.
There's no real secret to this one as Munoz was fourth here last year, having finished T3 on his debut in Japan at the Olympics, where he narrowly missed out on a medal after that massive play-off won by CT Pan.
Munoz's efforts here make perfect sense when you look through his profile, with third and seventh in two starts at the Greenbrier (one of them behind Schauffele, who won gold in Tokyo), fourth at the John Deere Classic, third at Colonial and seventh at East Lake, plus his sole PGA Tour win to date at the Sanderson Farms Championship.
Another former Firestone champion, Bradley said he loved the course when starting brightly here in 2019, perhaps paying the price for a weekend in the company of Woods, and returned last year to finish with a flourish for seventh place.
He said at the Sanderson Farms last time how much he enjoys a tree-lined course and before that, at the BMW Championship, he talked about how much he relishes hitting driver as often as possible. With three par-fives and a number of long par-fours, plus the rain which has fallen in Japan recently, it ought to be an important weapon this week.
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