Zozo Championship 2024 Best Bets: Woodland’s Road to Recovery
-
Craig Edwards
- October 21, 2024
Top Golf Pick: Gary Woodland to Finish Top 20 (+200) at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
The PGA Tour takes flight for the Japanese leg of its schedule, the Zozo Championship. Before heading to our top-rated sportsbooks, check out Craig Edwards’ (@EdwardsTips_) best bets for the sixth staging of the Zozo Championship.
Zozo Championship 2024
October 24 – 27, 2024 at Narashino Country Club, Japan
Course Notes
- Par 70, 7079 yards
- Tree-lined fairways with several doglegs.
- Water hazards on four holes.
- Bentgrass greens are slightly smaller than average.
- With the rainy season lurking, the same test of a golfer’s rainy weather skill awaits this year with a high probability of rain on all four days.
- Only a small sample to go on, but the course is a test of accuracy with GIR off the tee and tee-to-green stats paramount for success.
The Narashino Country Club looks like a proper championship test; indeed, the four winners so far are all major champions as mentioned. If you believe that trend will continue, that narrows down your list of potential winners, to Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Thomas and Gary Woodland.
Zozo Championship Roll of Honour
| Year | Champion | Score | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Collin Morikawa | -14 | Eric Cole Beau Hossler |
| 2022 | Keegan Bradley | -15 | Rickie Fowler Andrew Putnam |
| 2021 | Hideki Matsuyama | -15 | Brendan Steele Cameron Tringale |
| 2019 | Tiger Woods | -19 | Hideki Matsuyama |
*The 2020 Zozo Championship was played in America due to Covid-19.
The Fowler the Weather, the Better for Rickie!
Rickie Fowler has always been at the top of my notes for his ability to play much better than the rest in poor weather conditions. Back in 2022, when the rain silted down for the duration of the event, he was an impressive runner-up to Keegan Bradley (another poor weather specialist).
Traveling over to Japan on the back of two encouraging efforts in his two events on the PGA Tour fall series looks like a perfect prep for the thirty-five-year-old Californian.
Maybe it is a quirk of fate, maybe not, but the four winners at the Narashino Country Club have won at least one major championship during their career. Despite not being a major winner like the previous champions, Fowler’s pedigree in major championship golf is unquestioned with three runner-up finishes in the Masters, U.S. Open and the British Open.
We suggest using BetOnline and backing Rickie Fowler to win the Zozo Championship, combined with a top 20 props pick to benefit from his recent consistency.
Golf Pick: Rickie Fowler to Win Outright (+6000) at BetOnline
Golf Pick: Rickie Fowler to Finish Top 20 (+200) at BetOnline
Can Gary Excel in the Japanese Woodland?
Yes, there are several reasons to believe that Gary Woodland can excel at the Narashino Country Club. Happily, Woodland is now back in good health after a serious scare at the end of 2023 when he required brain surgery to remove a lesion.
Understandably, it has taken the forty-year-old from Kansas a full season to find any consistency, but the last two performances at the Shriners and Procore suggest that the elite ball striking that won the 2019 U.S. Open is back in the groove.
If Woodland has a weakness, it is undoubtedly his putting. However, the one time he traveled over for this event at the Narashino Country Club in 2019, he finished in the frame and must have put in respectably for 5th place. The winners’ trend of major champions will surely come to an end soon, but he is one of the five major champions teeing it up this week, so ticks that rather tenuous box, and this track looks a flushers’ paradise, something Woodland is!
With those good memories in the bank, this week could be the perfect storm for Gary Woodland to get back in the winners’ circle only a year after undergoing serious brain surgery. Take the price of (+6000) for Gary Woodland in the Zozo Championship.
Golf Pick: Gary Woodland to Win Outright (+6000) at Bovada (visit our Bovada Review)
Golf Pick: Gary Woodland to Finish Top 20 (+200) at BetOnline
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
