Ben Coley's golf betting tips: ZOZO Championship preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: ZOZO Championship

4pts e.w. Sungjae Im at 14/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

2pts e.w. Si Woo Kim at 30/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Max Homa at 55/1 (Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

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Favourites for the FedEx Fall so far have been named as follows: Sahith Theegala, Keith Mitchell (twice), Tom Kim. Two potential stars, one player who has spent seemingly a decade now threatening to be something more. There's been an overwhelming sense that this new part of the PGA Tour season, while fantastic for the purist, is going to be lacking in star quality for however many more years it lasts.

That isn't a problem in the ZOZO Championship, where the favourite is Xander Schauffele, and behind him are Collin Morikawa and Hideki Matsuyama, each past champions. In fact all three players have won in Japan, Schauffele of course having done so at the delayed Tokyo 2020, and while Matsuyama is the Japanese star, his rivals both have strong connections to the country that run deeper than golf.

The list of winners of these Fall events so far reads Patton Kizzire, Kevin Yu, Matt McCarty and JT Poston, but this is the first one for which the first few names in the market are genuinely fearsome. The question is, which of them, if any, is the bet?

Xander Schauffele was arguably the best player at the Presidents Cup and hasn't played poorly for many, many months. This has been his breakout season, Schauffele completing the transformation from nearly-man to two-time major champion, and it's difficult to envisage him finishing worse than about ninth. Then again, ninth is his best here so far and that's quite disappointing given his class.

Maybe Narashino Country Club doesn't suit him quite like it does the other two although Morikawa was improving on his previous efforts when he demolished a similar field 12 months ago and, having gone from a field-leading TOUR Championship to an excellent Presidents Cup, his prospects are obvious. I doubt defending this title will bother him in the slightest, either, even if he has strangely little experience doing that.

And then there's Matsuyama, who won for us at 14/1 three years ago and did us another favour at Southwind recently. He struck the ball very well in the Presidents Cup after a strong end to a two-win season and it's no wonder he's a single-figure price this time. Don't forget, though, that back in 2021 he had won the Masters before returning home to cap a dream year, so I don't know as 8/1 is giving much away.

I find myself happy enough to take them on and believe the value lies with SUNGJAE IM, who isn't as far behind his teammate Matsuyama as the betting suggests.

While other factors were at play they were given about the same chance by the layers when it came to top-scoring at the Presidents Cup and while Im could only manage a single point from five matches, the underlying strokes-gained numbers suggest he was a little unlucky not to contribute more.

Certainly, his long-game looked in good order and if there's one attribute I'm looking for here it's approach play. Narashino is a curious golf course where holes vary greatly and, for once, the entire bag gets a good workout. I don't think it's a coincidence that in Tiger Woods, Morikawa and Matsuyama, three of the very best iron players have won here, while 2022 champion Keegan Bradley is only one level below them.

Im ranks a bang-average 97th for the season but has improved quite a bit lately following a slow start to the campaign, gaining strokes in eight of his last nine starts, while his strong driving – highly accurate and by no means short – has a Bradley-like quality to it, too.

Third, 29th and 12th in three starts at the course show how comfortable he is around here and in part that comes from time spent on the Japan Tour earlier in his career, a fact he alluded to on debut. It's high time he bagged his third PGA Tour win and for my money he's the clear threat to the big three, the gap between him and the likes of Theegala and Justin Thomas too narrow.

Thomas could put up a determined effort after he was left out of the Presidents Cup side but that does mean he's been absent for two months. That's also a worry when it comes to Will Zalatoris, back to some sort of form during the Playoffs, though both of them fit the bill when it comes to the quality of their iron play.

So does SI WOO KIM and I'm a bit surprised he's not closer to 20/1 himself.

That's probably because of a seemingly modest course record but he was 18th here when out of form in 2021 and while 38th on debut was only OK, it came despite an opening 76. Over the following three rounds, Kim played to a high standard.

Tree-lined courses like this one certainly tend to suit – Sawgrass, Sedgefield, Waialae and Harbour Town are all among his favourite PGA Tour stops – and he really is one of the best iron players in the field, ranking 16th this season which puts him inside the top 10 among these.

The issue with Kim is that he's never had a positive year with the putter, a remarkable fact that tells you why he's not quite delivered on the promise of his PLAYERS win seven years ago, but he was better during the Playoffs and well and truly deadly at the Presidents Cup last time.

Perhaps he'll always be a player whose putting prowess is format-dependent but with those improved efforts at Southwind (ninth) and in Colorado (17th) in mind, there's actually a fair bit of evidence to suggest that he's found a new level of confidence with the flat stick.

If that's the case he really will be dangerous and I'm interested to see how he builds on Royal Montreal, where he was very much the star for Mike Weir's Internationals. The list of champions here features players with very similar statistical profiles to Kim and he forms a two-pronged Korean attack from somewhere near the head of the market.

One possible angle is to dig into last week's tee-times and find those who were undone by a massive draw bias. They include Andrew Putnam, one of my selections in Vegas and a former runner-up here, in-form Beau Hossler, fellow maiden Maverick McNealy and even runner-up Doug Ghim, who did especially well to overcome those high winds of Thursday and Friday.

Unfortunately, none of them appealed at the prices so it's back to the Presidents Cup where MAX HOMA performed far better than I and many others had expected.

Homa arrived there under a cloud, his missed cut at Silverado adding to a miserable summer run, and revealed that he'd dispensed with his swing coach in August. Despite his exploits at the previous year's Ryder Cup, these form concerns meant he was benched for day one.

Paired with a similarly out-of-sorts Brian Harman, Homa then went 0-2 across Friday and Saturday before finding himself at the bottom of the singles order, his 2&1 victory over Mackenzie Hughes, when the match had already been won, hardly something we can hang our hats on.

However, from a strokes-gained perspective he was in fact the best player in the event from tee-to-green and with his irons and while these rougher-than-usual calculations do come with caveats, he passed the eye test, too. I felt Homa looked in excellent touch and he seemed to feel that taking ownership of his own swing was a significant step in the right direction.

We've not seen him since and he comes with risks attached, but he's a fan of classical golf courses like this one and on his sole previous start did show some promise, moving through the field with a third-round 66 before a disappointing finish. That though was five years ago and he'd done very little since his breakthrough victory in the spring.

Homa showed his class when travelling to South Africa and winning at Sun City late last year, that on his first start since a brilliant Ryder Cup display, and while I'd have been happy enough to let him go at 28-33/1, 50s has to be taken. I feel very strongly that his performance last month has been dismissed by the market as irrelevant, whereas I remain open-minded.

Rickie Fowler is another with strong Japanese connections and he's returned from a break with his game in better shape. Presumably he'll have spent some of last week working with Butch Harmon at his Las Vegas base and without his new baby travelling with him to Tokyo, jet lag might feel like much less of a problem.

He's respected with motivation guaranteed while I did half wonder whether quality ball-striker Joel Dahmen might find the right response to last week's 15 clubs debacle, he another of those to have been badly drawn, but three against the big three is enough.

Posted at 2130 BST on 21/10/24

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