Sungjae Im can return to winning form and pick up another title on home soil as the DP World Tour heads to Korea for the Genesis Championship.
Woo Jeong Hills takes over as host venue for the Genesis Championship, the final event of the DP World Tour regular season before two more in the Middle East determine the final shape of the Race to Dubai.
We’ll come to the course in a moment, but first an uncomfortable truth: this is meant to be where the battle for 2026 cards reaches its crescendo, yet several of the players involved in it cannot get a game. There are 36 Korean Tour players ahead of them in the queue and others, including some of the biggest names in the field, who parachute in for a lucrative opportunity that will not change their careers.
It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that this used to be better and it’s most unfortunate that, come Sunday, we might not get the drama we crave. Yes, it was in this event that a closing par earned Marco Penge status for what’s proven to be a career-changing year, but that shouldn’t hide the fact that too many players with status have simply not been given a fair crack at establishing themselves on the circuit this year.
Personally, I’m for a smaller, leaner Tour, which is what we appear to be heading towards. However many cards there are available through Qualifying School and the HotelPlanner Tour, they need to be meaningful, substantive; to give those players clarity and the ability to build a schedule. This year, some have faced the thankless task of earning sufficient Race to Dubai points from a dozen or so of the least valuable tournaments. That’s just not sustainable.
The other, compounding factor is the presence of those better players who do not really play DP World Tour schedules. Last year, around a third of the available Race to Dubai points were taken off the table by the first two home, Ben An and Tom Kim. Penge, Ricardo Gouveia and Ivan Cantero did so well to feed off the remaining scraps but 12 months on, it’s likely that the 5,000 points that are theoretically to play for remain theoretical; that in fact, there might be 3,000 at best.
None of this should be seen as criticism of the Tour’s leadership, who I imagine would much rather have stuck to the Portugal Masters and something wholly more satisfying from a competitive standpoint, and it’s to their credit that both Q-School and the HotelPlanner Tour are being slimmed down in 2026. That will have been a difficult, not universally popular decision, and it was surely a necessary one.
Onto the course, then. Woo Jeong Hills might reasonably claim to be the toughest in Korea, built by the son of Pete Dye to resemble a ‘big, brutish, US tournament course’ according to one reviewer. It is pretty in-your-face with undulating fairways, thick rough, narrow fairways, big bunkers, and a dozen water hazards. Its 13th hole is modelled on the 17th at Sawgrass, only about a hundred yards longer.
In 21 renewals of the Korean Open, 11 were won in a single-digit under-par score. Seungsu Han won in six-under but by six shots two years ago. Rickie Fowler reached 16-under for his professional breakthrough, with Rory McIlroy six behind him. That was perhaps the easiest renewal yet, with others having largely been tough. Little wonder that proven class has therefore counted, with PGA Tour winners KH Lee and Sung Kang both two-time champions along with major champion YE Yang.
It is a tad difficult to tie these winners together otherwise, but at their best Lee and Kang were both solid drivers and Yang is an accurate one. This 7,367-yard par 71 probably doesn’t play as long as it looks as plenty of that number comes from three tough par-threes, but I do think driving will be key, as it also opens up the scoring chances on three mid-range par-fives and two short par-fours.
As such, I’m willing to chance SUNGJAE IM, who has been a reliably excellent driver since first arriving on the PGA Tour: relentlessly accurate but by no means short, and always inside the top 20 percent.
One thing that has changed with Im is the quality of his approach play, which has fallen off a cliff this year. From around average over the past two seasons he’s currently ranked last of 171 players and, if that continues then we won’t be far off waving goodbye to him in majors as his world ranking continues to slide.
Somehow, he still managed to make the TOUR Championship and has a full schedule in 2026 to look forward to, with plenty of time to put right this problem he’s developed. And, hence why I’m happy to take a chance back on home soil, he did produce his best approach play numbers of the season in Japan two weeks ago.
From that T20 in the Baycurrent Classic, Im went and hopefully built more confidence with seventh place on the Asian Tour and he should now be sharp for this third start after six weeks off. No doubt this has been his target and while at a lower level, he’s won three of his last six starts in his native Korea, one of them in a previous guise of this event.
He does have a missed cut to his name from one start here but that was aged 16 and Im looks the pick of the home contenders ahead of defending champion An, perhaps better suited to last year’s course, and Si Woo Kim, who is bound to play well, but almost as certain to putt badly.
The rest of Im’s game has remained at a high standard and if he really has turned a corner with his approach work, he should contend.
We’ve seen throughout the past few months that when big names drop in grade, they’re hard to stop. Alex Noren has won twice, Rory McIlroy and Robert MacIntyre once each, Marco Penge has underlined why he’s on his way to the PGA Tour, and Michael Kim came over from there to win the Open de France, where fellow blow-ins Brooks Koepka and Min Woo Lee both contended.
Despite a constricting golf course in Delhi, Tommy Fleetwood had Shane Lowry, Brian Harman and Viktor Hovland all pursuing him last week, McIlroy not far behind them, and as mentioned An beat Tom Kim in this event last year. There are levels, and there are several of those levels between the top and bottom players in what’s a smorgasbord of a field.
That means maximum respect must be afforded to the other big names here but while Hideki Matsuyama sets the standard, his driving has been unreliable for most of the season and is too big a concern. That leaves Adam Scott as the standout and perhaps it’s time for the Aussie to win again – if you are looking for two from the top it’s Scott who appealed most to me, just not quite enough at the prices.
I did wonder if his warm-up in the Japan Open last week, played under tough conditions, could prove ideal preparation and from just outside the top 50 in the world rankings, there ought to be plenty of incentive for the 45-year-old as he enters the closing stretch of a busy year. He’s generally driven the ball well and, with some hints of putting improvement of late, better can be expected.
There’s a case for Thriston Lawrence after he was rewarded for being more aggressive than most off the tee in Delhi last week, while I had hoped to include Angel Ayora to the staking plan at bigger than the 25/1 currently available.
This young Spaniard has boundless potential and he’s already delivering big results, enough to be inside the top 30 on the Race to Dubai in his rookie season. Having turned 21 just a couple of weeks ago, whatever comes of this debut campaign it’s been a big success.
There’s time though for it to end with a PGA Tour card and two of the final three courses will suit him nicely, starting here. I feel it’ll be far more susceptible to his long, accurate driving than Delhi and simply love the fact that not only did he miss the cut by one, but from five-over through 11 holes he rallied to reach one-under through 36, playing beautifully for the most part.
Nine birdies in his final 23 holes at a course he didn’t know and wouldn’t have enjoyed showed that Ayora remains in very good touch and, after four top-10s in his previous six starts, there is a strong level of consistency to his game.
Ayora does lack experience in the Far East but was runner-up in China on the HotelPlanner Tour, where his earlier win had come under difficult conditions on a hazard-lined course in Poland, and I’ve felt for a while that this could be the time to catch him. In a top-heavy field, perhaps he’s ready to rub shoulders with the likes of Matsuyama, Scott and Im.
Unfortunately, the market is ignoring last week too and he just has to be left alone at the current odds.
Posted at 1135 BST on 21/10/25
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