Koepka (70) maintains 7-shot advantage at PGA

The PGA TOUR travels to Chiba, Japan for the second of three straight tournaments in Asia and the first installment of the ZOZO Championship at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club. The 78-man field will consist of 60 golfers from the PGA TOUR along with players from the Japanese Golf Tour Organization as well as sponsor exemptions. Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Xander Schauffele will make their season debuts. There is no cut. Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club will play as a par 70 measuring 7,041 yards. The course features tree-lined fairways, six dogleg holes and undulating, bentgrass greens, which should be moderately easy to hit. We shouldn’t expect a ton of big numbers unless the golfers get in trouble on one of the four holes where water hazards are in play. Players won’t need a ton of distance, but like last week, the course may be vulnerable to windy conditions with it being close to the ocean. Greens are small, with ample bunkering coming into play on almost every hole. The course will also have two greens per hole, which is something we don’t regularly see on TOUR; players will get a free drop if their ball lands on the incorrect green. Even though this is a par 70, there are three par 5s, which all measure over 550 yards. There will also be five par 4s measuring over 450 yards, so key statistics to focus are Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee with an emphasis on accuracy and Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green. Similar to last week, scrambling efficiency from the sand as well as par-4 scoring average should be considered when building our lineups. TOP VALUES ADAM SCOTT ($9,900) Hopefully his 42nd place at The Shriners Hospital for Children Open moves his ownership down from where it should be this week. Even though he didn’t win last season, Scott recorded eight top-10s, which included two runner-up finishes at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide and Farmers Insurance Open. He’s been struggling with his off-the-tee game ranking 62nd in the field over his last 24 rounds, but his irons and his putting have been great over the same timeframe. Scott has ranked seventh in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and has gained strokes on the greens in his last five straight tournaments. XANDER SCHAUFFELE ($10,400) Schauffele will tee it up for the first time this season in a no-cut event, a format he excels in. Just 25, he’s already won the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions, Sentry Tournament of Champions and TOUR Championship in his short career. He ranks among the top 12 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee and the top 25 in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-green over his last six tournaments. Interesting fact: Xander’s mother is from Taiwan, but grew up in Japan. Take it for what it’s worth. JOAQUIN NIEMANN ($8,200) Niemann continues his solid ball-striking by gaining strokes off the tee as well as with his irons since breaking through at A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier last month. Over the last three tournaments, Niemann has lost strokes around the greens, but is first in the field in sand save percentage. He also ranks inside the top 20 in par-4 scoring average and should be traveling to Japan with momentum on his side after a T12 finish at THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES. RYAN PALMER ($6,900) Like Niemann, Palmer finished T12 at THE CJ CUP. He brings his solid ball-striking to Japan ranking 25th in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green over his last three tournaments. He’s struggling with his par-4 scoring average, but ranks first in par-5 efficiency from 550 to 600 yards over his last 12 rounds. Having played well at course corollaries like The Honda Classic and Valspar Championship, Palmer should be a solid value play at his price this week. Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is reidtfowler) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.

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Few PGA TOUR players are more passionate about golf-course architecture than Zac Blair. He’s back on TOUR this season after spending a year on the Korn Ferry Tour, which means he can re-visit several of his favorite layouts. Waialae Country Club, which hosts this week’s Sony Open in Hawaii, is high on that list. Waialae was built by Seth Raynor nearly a century ago during an era known as the Golden Age of architecture. Blair’s affinity for the course is shown in his performances in Honolulu. He finished T6 in his Sony debut five years ago, then followed with a career-best third in 2016. This week will be his first Sony start in three years. After failing to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs in 2017 and 2018, he had to return to the Korn Ferry Tour last year. He won the second-to-last event of the Regular Season to regain his TOUR card and is off to a good start this season. He finished T4 at the Safeway Open and T14 at the Mayakoba Golf Classic to sit 51st in the FedExCup standings.  Blair recently spoke to PGATOUR.COM about Waialae, losing (and regaining) his TOUR card and the status of The Buck Club, the course he dreams of bringing to his native Utah. PGATOUR.COM: What’s your best memory from Waialae? Zac Blair: Probably that 3-wood I hit on 18 (in 2016). That was something you never forget, hitting that good of a shot in that situation. … I figured if I made eagle, I would have a chance to win. I hit it exactly how I wanted to. I needed to hit a really good one. I hit it perfect and it came off with that perfect ball flight. I knew if it got the hop, it could be really good. (Note: Blair, who had 275 yards remaining for his second shot to the par-5 18th, missed his 15-foot eagle putt and finished one shot out of a playoff won by Fabian Gomez.) PGATOUR.COM: What do you love about playing there? Zac Blair: It’s a cool spot. Any of those par-70s where you get that Bermudagrass, where there’s a real premium on hitting it in the fairway, it’s obviously really nice. I’ve played it a few times where it’s been really firm and I can get it out as far as those longer hitters because they may be hitting hybrid off the tee. The course is fun. It’s a cool way to start the year. I’m excited to get back and see what Tom Doak has done with the restoration. Most of the big changes have taken place the last two or three years since I last played there. PGATOUR.COM: What do you like about Raynor courses? Zac Blair: I just find them enjoyable. I really enjoy some of those template holes and green complexes in general. I feel like they offer a large selection of pin positions. You can make the course play a lot different day-to-day. A hole can play completely different just by moving the hole 10-12 steps. PGATOUR.COM: Do you feel like you gained anything from having to go back to the Korn Ferry Tour? Zac Blair: For sure. Not that I took it for granted, but you realize how good you have it on the big tour. From the courses we play, the food we eat to how they take care of you. It’s nice to get back for a lot of those reasons, and obviously you play for a lot more money, which is never a bad thing. PGATOUR.COM: Is your game any different than the last time you were on TOUR? Zac Blair: I don’t think so. I’m still short. I just have to make the putts. I just went back to a lot of stuff I did growing up or stuff I did right when I got out on TOUR. When I first got on TOUR, I just went out and felt it out. Then I was trying so hard to make my putting stroke more fundamentally sound or trying to change it because you would hear people say, ‘You’ll have to change your putting if you want to be more consistent.’ But I was always one of the best putters I knew, so it was silly to change it to make it look better. I went back to putting the way I putt. That’s the biggest difference. PGATOUR.COM: Was there a time when you worried about getting back on TOUR? Zac Blair: The year after I finished 126th (in the FedExCup), I still had a lot of opportunities. I got in like 20 events, so I got in enough where if I’d played well I could get back in that top 125. I may have gotten a little ‘woe is me’ that year, like, ‘I can’t believe I finished 126th.’ Last year, I told myself that if I just dedicated myself to grinding it out and not complaining about being on the Korn Ferry Tour, not having a ‘woe is me’ attitude, I could play solid and get my card. I just did a good job of staying focused and realizing that sometimes you have to go through situations like that to get back to where you want to be, or where you know you’re going to be. But there are always those times where you have bad weeks and you don’t know. PGATOUR.COM: What’s the status of The Buck Club? Zac Blair: I think it’s in a good spot. We’re still looking for some money to build the course but I think we’re pretty OK with where we’re at right now, with being a golf club without a course. We’re hoping to get it built in the near future, but we’re not in any rush to go do something drastic without the proper means to make it something that will last and be here for a long time. I wanted it to be this private club in Utah for my friends and golf junkies around the world, and it’s kind of turned into something bigger than that without trying. We do a lot of stuff for junior golf, raising money for things like that with the tournaments that we host. It’s been really cool to see all the people support it from all over the world. It’s crazy how much support we’ve gotten.

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Dustin Johnson fires a final-round 65, the best of the week, to lap the field at the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, moving from 25th to second in the FedExCup. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where we are still struggling to blink as we stare at Johnson’s incredible near albatross in Maui. Here are some observations after Johnson solidified his place at the top of the world with a commanding eight-shot win at the Sentry TOC. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Johnson’s power has always been scary, but scarier still is how he has developed finesse and precision, drilling down on his wedge game and tidying up around the greens. We’re seeing the results. His putting, greatly improved, still comes and goes, but he didn’t have a single three-putt at the Sentry, and his pair of eagles on the 430-yard, par-4 12th on the weekend further illustrate his greatness. The first came with a wedge from 72 yards, the second with a nuked driver that bounded onto the green and stopped just inches from going in. He says he feels unbeatable at his best. He might be right. 2. One of the oft-used superlatives for Johnson has been consistent. At Kapalua, he ran his win streak to 11 seasons with at least one victory since his rookie year in 2008. Only Tiger Woods with 18 victories has won more than Johnson (17) in that time span. But lately the better term for D.J. is dominant. His romp at Kapalua, the biggest blowout on TOUR since Jordan Spieth also won by eight at the 2016 Sentry TOC, was Johnson’s eighth win since the start of 2016. He said before the tournament that he could envision a monster season with seven, eight or even nine victories. Given what happened at the Plantation Course, Johnson could indeed be on the verge of that kind of year.    3. Jon Rahm (69, 16-under) was trying to become the third first-timer, after Daniel Chopra (2008) and Sergio Garcia (2002), to win the Sentry TOC since it moved to Kapalua in ’99. As it was, Rahm’s solo second-place finish marked his fourth runner-up on TOUR (and second to Johnson), further suggesting Rahm is on the fast track to greatness. It took Johnson a few years to learn to harness his talents; might Rahm be on a similar trajectory? If so, who will have the better career, Rahm, 23, who has one win, or Johnson, 33, who has 17? 4. Pat Perez’s T4 finish puts him in pole position in the FedExCup. His performance at the Sentry marked his third top-five finish in five starts this season, and suggests still feels like he’s playing with the house money after surviving 2016 shoulder surgery. “I definitely know my game better,� Perez, 41, said for an upcoming feature on PGATOUR.com. “But the short game has definitely gotten a lot better. I don’t know how many shots I’ve picked up over the last year and a half.� At Kapalua, Perez hit 80 percent of the fairways (T1) and was +1.283 in strokes gained putting, third best. 5. At a career-high 12th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Marc Leishman continues to impress as he builds towards becoming one of the top 10. The Australian led the tournament through the first two rounds only to struggle mightily in round three to a 76. It was an ugly Saturday, particularly on the greens, but to his credit he shot a 6-under 67 on Sunday, one of only two bogey-free rounds on the day (Hideki Matsuyama, 66) to finish T7. Don’t be surprised if Leishman adds a fourth PGA TOUR title soon – the Farmers Insurance Open is one event to pencil for this guy. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Johnson tied Ernie Els for the most eagles in a career at Kapalua (eight), but missed tying another record. After making his only bogey of the final round at the par-3 11th hole, Johnson’s 430-yard drive at the 12th stopped inches from the cup, leading to a tap-in eagle. Andrew Magee is the only player to ace a par-4 in TOUR history, doing so at the 332-yard 17th hole at the 2001 Waste Management Phoenix Open. 2. Johnson’s statistical line makes for pretty impressive reading. Strokes gained: off the tee: +8.902 (1st); strokes gained: tee to green: +13.989 (1st); strokes gained: approach the green: +2.777 (1st); strokes gained: around the green: +2.310 (4th); strokes gained: putting: +2.894 (6th). In other words, your basic demolition derby. 3. Brian Harman (72, solo third) now has four top-10 finishes in four starts this season. And as if that weren’t reason enough for good cheer, Harman’s alma mater, Georgia, made it to college football’s National Championship game against Alabama. 4. Rickie Fowler (70, T4) finished 10 behind the winner, but he has finished in the top four of both his starts this season, after a runner-up at the OHL Classic at Mayakoba in early November. And his line at the Sentry TOC (T6 in 2013, 5th 2016, T4 2018) also seems to suggest he’s heading in the right direction. 5. Strange but true: In registering yet another top-10 finish, Jordan Spieth (69, -12, solo ninth) put together his worst result at Kaplua. In three previous starts at the Sentry TOC, the 2016 champion hadn’t finished out of the top three.   TOP THREE VIDEOS

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