The PGA TOUR heads over to Japan this week for the Zozo Championship, which will be played at the 7,079-yard, par 70 Narashino Country Club. The venue plays as a beautifully manicured tree-lined venue that has traditionally catered heavily to the best iron players in the field. While we leaned heavily on the a.m. tee times last week — and it nearly paid off with Maverick McNealy finishing his round one off the first-round lead — this week is a no-cut event so there’s not much space between the first starters and the last.
The Zozo is just a 78-man field so we will be more selective with our choices, too. That doesn’t mean we can’t look at a couple of long shots, though. Last season saw Hiroshi Iwata finish with a 63 in round one and a payout for those who took him at 100-1 or better. The year before that we had a first-round leader in Sebastian Munoz, who went off around 60-1/70-1 around the industry. The weather on Thursday is cooler, although there is a chance of rain coming in the middle of the day, which could either help (soften the greens) or hinder (make grips wet, stance difficult) scores.
As such, we’ve employed the OddsShopper golf betting tools below and tried to spread the wealth on our bets across the starting times while remaining faithful to the idea that this is a more technical track where great iron play and potentially a great short game will need to be leaned upon for lower scores.
2022 Zozo Championship First Round Leader Bets
Best First Round Leader Betting Picks
Keegan Bradley First Round Leader +3500 | DraftKings
Keegan Bradley doesn’t win much these days but he’s good at coming out of the gate hot a couple of times a year. His iron play dipped in the middle of the season but ball-striking is still his greatest strength by a long shot and he bounced back nicely in that regard in his last start at the Sanderson — where he gained 5.0 strokes ball-striking. Bradley was strong throughout the bag at that event (finishing fifth) and it was only two starts ago that he opened with a 64 at the BMW Championship. In two prior starts at Narashino, he’s shot rounds of 65 and 63 and there’s clearly a like for the venue on his part, given that this will be the third time he’s ventured over to play there. The number isn’t huge but he’s starting in the latest group of the day, so if the sun is out and the wind/rain is down, there’s a good chance he’ll be on a soft course and will be able to come home with a low score.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout First Round Leader +4000 | BetMGM
On the complete opposite end of Bradley (who goes out last) is South African Christiaan Bezuidenhout, who goes out in the very first group at 8:50 a.m. JST. Bezuidenhout will be playing for the fourth week in a row, although one of those starts was in match play at the President’s Cup. He continues to make cuts and lean on his ridiculous short game, which has gained him 4.0+ strokes in each of his last two starts. What hasn’t gotten hot for Bezuidenhout yet is his putter and that’s a club that has carried him at points in his career. He ranks second in this field in strokes gained putting on bentgrass greens so perhaps the climate change will ignite that club this week on a surface that’s treated him very kindly in the past. A multiple-time winner across three different countries on the Euro Tour, the technical layout won’t disadvantage him off the tee and should give him a decent shot at putting together a low round or two on these pure bentgrass greens.
If looking to make a wager on BetMGM this week, then Bezuidenhout is a first-round leader target to consider at that sportsbook. He has solid 40-1 odds there (bigger odds than other places), and new BetMGM users get a risk-free bet up to $1,000!
Longshots
With another weaker field, we’ll also continue the theme of taking shots in our first round leader bets with a basket of players with longer odds. You can always use Oddsshopper to check out and compare odds across the major sites.
Joel Dahmen first round leader +9000 | DraftKings
I considered a couple of Japanese players for this spot and admittedly Yuto Katsuragawa stands out as a player of note. That said, we are getting 90-1 on a proven talent in Joel Dahmen and that fact alone gets him the last spot in the FRL crew this week. Dahmen has gained 4.0+ strokes on approach in each of his last two starts and certainly has the archetypically game for a place like Narashino. Dahmen’s also got a pretty credible record as a starter too, especially when he’s in form, and opened with a 65 or better on three different occasions last season. He bombed out to a 76th-place finish at Narashino in 2019 but that was a rain-sodden event. He enters Japan this season as a PGA winner and coming off two straight starts. I’d look for a much better effort from him in 2022 and at 90-1, he’s dripping with value as a first-round target given some of the non-PGA TOUR players/names around him at these levels.
