Glen Oaks Club part of rich Met Section history

The PGA TOUR heads back to Japan for the fourth iteration of the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. Japan’s favorite modern golfing son, Hideki Matsuyama, will headline the field as he looks to defend his title from last season. Matsuyama captured the 2021 ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP by five shots. FIELD NOTES: World No. 5 Xander Schauffele is the top-ranked golfer in the field… Collin Morikawa, at No. 9, is the other member of the world’s top-10 teeing it up… Schauffele – who won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics – and Morikawa are joined by fellow U.S. Team Presidents Cup member Cameron Young, who is making his event debut (and first trip to Japan)… There’s plenty of International Team Presidents Cup flair in Japan as Sungjae Im, Tom Kim, Corey Conners, K.H. Lee, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Cam Davis, Si Woo Kim, Mito Pereira, and Sebastian Munoz are all in the field. Pereira held the 36-hole lead at the Shriners Children’s Open… Matsuyama leads the home-country contingent. The event is co-sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour Organization (JGTO) once again for 2022 and there will be more than a dozen members of the JGTO teeing it up… Mackenzie Hughes returns to action after his win at the Sanderson Farms Championship… Sponsor’s exemptions include Matt Wallace, who finished T4 last season, along with TOUR winners Cameron Champ, Satoshi Kodaira, and Rickie Fowler… European Ryder Cup teammates Viktor Hovland (ranked No.11 in the world) and Tommy Fleetwood are also in the field. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 FedExCup points. COURSE: Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club, par 70, 7,079 yards. About 40 yards has been added to the official scorecard at the Narashino Country Club for this year’s iteration of the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. The 36-hole facility in Chiba, Japan, was opened in 1965 and played host to a number of high-level golf events in its history before the PGA TOUR arrived in 2019. Designed by Shinya Fujita and east of Tokyo, it’s a stunning parkland layout. STORYLINES: The ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP will once again have a 78-man field, four rounds, and no cut. A full 500 FedExCup points will be awarded to the winner… Tiger Woods and Matsuyama won the two ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP events to take place in Japan, while Patrick Cantlay won the event in 2020, which was moved to Sherwood, Calif… Matsuyama is looking to successfully defend a title on the PGA TOUR for the second time (he won the WM Phoenix Open in 2016 and 2017)… Plenty of youthful Japanese firepower will be teeing it up at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. Two Mark H. McCormack Medal winners in Keita Nakajima and Takumi Kanaya will be in the field along with 20-year-old Ryo Hisatsune, who just turned professional. 72-HOLE RECORD: 261, Tiger Woods (2019) 18-HOLE RECORD: 63, Keegan Bradley (Second round, 2019), Rory McIlroy (Third round, 2019), Hiroshi Iwata (First round, 2021), Naoto Nakanishi (Fourth round, 2021). Tournament Record: 61, Richy Werenski (Second round, 2020 at Sherwood) LAST TIME: Japan’s own Hideki Matsuyama had a flurry of a finish to win the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP last season by five shots. The Masters champion made three birdies in a five-hole stretch on his back nine Sunday – and eagled the par-5 closing hole to put a bow on the week – to top runners up Brendan Steele and Cameron Tringale. Matsuyama closed with a 65 and a 15 under total to capture a TOUR title for the seventh time. He won eight times in Japan previously, including in 2011 as an amateur, but was unable to medal at the Tokyo Olympics so this win was a measure of revenge. Matsuyama held a one-shot lead through 54 holes but that was erased by Tringale by the 10th hole Sunday, who jumped into the first-place position after back-to-back birdies on Nos 9 and 10. That’s when Matsuyama turned it on, however. Matsuyama’s closing eagle featured a beautiful fairway wood from 241 yards which nearly found the bottom of the cup for an albatross. Mackenzie Hughes, Matt Wallace, and Sebastian Munoz rounded out the top five. HOW TO FOLLOW: Television: Wednesday (into Thursday)-Thursday (into Friday): 11 p.m.-3 a.m. ET (Golf Channel). Friday (into Saturday), 10:30 p.m.-2:30 a.m. Saturday (into Sunday): 11 p.m.-3 a.m.

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The year’s first major comes with plenty of questions, and not only because it’s the first one in 13 months and the first one without fans. We go through each and give some answers.

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The season’s last tournament and the final stop of the FedExCup Playoffs is here. The TOUR Championship will be at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. The course will play as a par 70, measuring 7,346 yards and be putt on Bermuda greens. This course is a Donald Ross design. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $1.2M Pitch + Putt [$300K to 1st] STRATEGY The new scoring system implemented three years ago, what the PGA TOUR refers to as a ‘Starting Strokes’, correlates to the FedExCup standings heading into the TOUR Championship. The top 30 in standings will be playing for a chance to win the $18 million first-place check and the FedExCup trophy. With the most points, Scottie Scheffler ($13,600) starts at 10 under, with second place starting two back at 8 under and descending by a stroke to fifth place. Head to the FedExCup page on PGATOUR.COM for a complete list of where the golfers will start. Donald Ross courses are about positioning yourself nicely off the tee and hitting elite approaches from the correct angles into these Bermuda greens. Even though the region has seen more rain than usual, these greens should play fast as they have over the previous three years. While iron play is paramount on a Ross design, Strokes Gained: Putting has proved more crucial over Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green for the winners over the previous five years. When Rory McIlroy ($10,800) and Xander Schauffele ($12,300) are some of the best golfers on a course, total driving should be an important stat to key in on this week. Fading some golfers high on the leaderboard could prove prudent when filling out rosters. The golfers will be starting with their “finishing” position points on DraftKings, but as we’ve seen in the previous two years, those points can go away fast if or when the leaders are no longer where they started. The top of the leaderboard golfers only come in with their starting points, not the birdies or better points they usually get on the path to victory. McIlroy is the only golfer to win the TOUR Championship and be in the winning lineup (2019). Also, over the previous three years, winning lineups in the main tournament haven’t used their entire $50,000 salary. The most used was $49,800 last season, and the least was $49,500 in 2020. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Rory McIlroy ($10,800) There’s been one golfer who’s been in the winning lineup each of the last three years: Rory McIlroy. The triple bogey on the 15th hole in the first round and nothing going his way on the greens ultimately stopped him from competing last week, but no one was better tee-to-green than McIlroy, gaining 10.56 strokes at Wilmington Country Club. Rory will be a popular pick this week, but rostering chalk at the top of the range for the golfer who’s won the TOUR Championship twice shouldn’t be faded, especially with how he’s playing. We’ve seen the weekend surge from Jon Rahm ($10,900) twice, where he’s started slow and grinded his way to a top-5 finish in FedEx St. Jude Championship and a top-8 finish last week at the BMW Championship. Rahm recorded the lowest gross score last season at East Lake and now starts seven back from Scheffler. Rahm recorded 10 birdies and no bogeys last weekend and ranked second in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee over the entire week. His Bermuda putting could worry some managers off Rahm this week, but we all know his upside is massive. Sungjae Im ($9,100) Im could be a potential daily fantasy golf sleeper this week with a bunch of sentiment going toward McIlroy and Rahm. Sunday’s round last week was chaotic, recording five bogeys and five birdies. He birdied the final three holes on Sunday and has finished inside the top 15 in each round of the Playoffs. Back-to-back runner-up finishes at the 3M Open and the Wyndham Championship this season should give the 19th-ranked golfer in the world confidence coming into a tournament he hasn’t played well in the past. A top-8 finish at this year’s Sentry Tournament of Champions and an eighth place at this year’s Masters Tournament are good signs he could be up for the challenge the TOUR Championship presents. Losing strokes through approach in his past two events is not great, and you never want to bank on another spike putting week. Still, with a week like the TOUR Championship, you need to zig when others zag, and Im has been playing well for the last month; hopefully, he can end on a high note. Aaron Wise ($5,400) Since 2019, there have been five total golfers under $6,000 in the winning lineups. Last season, Daniel Berger and Billy Horschel were at $5,900 and $5,100 respectively, and Wise could fill that role this week. Wise is averaging 3.65 strokes gained through approach in the Playoffs and 2.35 off-the-tee. He finished 15th last week but was in the top 5 on Sunday before suffering a late double-bogey-bogey stretch that took him out of a podium finish. Wise has nothing to lose starting at even par, so he should be attacking each pin and scoring like he has been for the past month. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $1.2M Pitch + Putt [$300K to 1st] Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests. The contents contained in this article do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. 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