2021 Zozo Championship: Top 10 power rankings at Narashino CC

The PGA Tour goes international for the first time in the 2021-22 season for the Zozo Championship.

Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba, Japan, is the venue. The tournament is in its third edition and in its second time at Narashino. This is supposed to be the permanent venue, but the pandemic moved the 2020 event to Sherwood Country Club in California.

The Zozo Championship features 78 players, 60 of which qualified from the 2020-21 FedEx Cup standings. Seven more qualified off of the Japan Golf Tour money list. Top three players from the JGT event, the Bridgestone Open and eight sponsor exemptions round out the field.

Tiger Woods won the inaugural event in 2019 and Patrick Cantlay won in 2020.

Narashino opened in 1965 and is a parkland style course measuring 7,224 yards for a par 70. Like many Japanese courses, it features two greens on every hole. This is done to keep greens playable during different seasons.

For the Zozo Championship, the bentgrass greens in place for the winter season will be played and expect to roll around 11 on the stimpmeter.

There are three par-5s and five par-3s on the scorecard.

ShotLink was not available to collect stats in 2019, so all there is to work with is the basic stats of fairway accuracy, greens in regulation, number of putts, etc.

Fairways were harder to hit than PGA Tour average and greens were about average to hit.

There are some heavy hitters in the field for this no-cut, guaranteed money event. With that said, a lot have also opted out due to the travel and the Zozo falling a week after another similar free money event, the CJ Cup in Las Vegas. If that event was where it was supposed to be held in South Korea, the trip to the Zozo would certainly be more palatable.

Based on the Official World Golf Rankings, there are two top-five players (and top 10) and five from the top 30.

Let’s get down to it. Here are the top 10 players to contend to win this week in Japan.