The PGA Tour heads to a new golf course in Japan for this week’s Baycurrent Classic, where golf expert Ben Coley can’t find a bet.
The PGA Tour’s annual trip to Japan comes with a new name and a new golf course, Yokohama Country Club now playing host to the Baycurrent Classic where previously we had the ZOZO at Narashino, but much else stays the same – including the identities of the favourites.
Xander Schauffele won Olympic gold in Tokyo, Collin Morikawa won this tournament two years ago and Hideki Matsuyama won it two years before that, so the big three all have obvious claims as well as varying degrees of local connection. Matsuyama’s are obvious, but Morikawa’s father is Japanese-American and Schauffele’s family also have strong ties to Japan, which is a big part of the reason they all keep coming back.
For Schauffele and Morikawa, this limited-field, no-cut event is also a nice way to return to action following Ryder Cup disappointment and there was some promise from both of them at Bethpage, particularly the way Schauffele thrashed Jon Rahm in the singles. Matsuyama meanwhile made a run at the BMW PGA title on his Wentworth debut but stalled badly on Saturday and his driver continues to be a bit of a problem.
Picking between them isn’t easy but the course may help. Yokohama’s composite is a mid-length par 71 with two short par-fives and just three par-threes, but the biggest available clue might be the success of Yuki Inamori in three Japan Golf Tour events held here.
Remarkably, Inamori (course form of 1-5-12) has topped that tour’s driving accuracy charts in each of his 10 seasons as a member, and in general contenders have tended to be straighter than they are strong.
All this could be thrown out of the window now that the elites of the PGA Tour come to town but while these fairways are wide in places, there’s plenty of punishment for those who miss them. There’s also a chance that, as at Harbour Town and one or two other PGA Tour venues, even hitting the fairway isn’t enough to guarantee a player a shot at the green.
On the flip side, there’s rain around early in the week – and lots of it. Playing conditions could be quite nasty over the first two days but the width of these fairways and the fact that the threat of the greens could be significantly undermined if they’re more akin to dart boards could render those three previous JGTO events meaningless. Soft conditions remain the one thing no course can really guard against, not when the PGA Tour is in town.
Had we been set for a firm and fast week, I’d have been happy taking some chances on shortlisted players like Takumi Kanaya, who played well in the Sanderson Farms and knows this course. Si Woo Kim would’ve been of interest in the hope that he can hole a few putts, his form on tree-lined courses of a high standard, with Kevin Yu, Emiliano Grillo and Christiaan Bezuidenhout all appealing to varying degrees, although I don’t love the prices quoted for any of this trio.
But if it’s soft, as it should be, this course could actually play quite long and very wide, which would bring us more into the realms of giving Michael Thorbjornsen another chance after his exceptional ball-striking was undermined by a hopeless short-game last week. Thorbjornsen, who I expect to continue to climb the rankings and become one of the best players in the USA in time, was second in strokes-gained ball-striking, but 29th overall.
It’s interesting that he’s been put in at the same price as Min Woo Lee again having shown abundantly more promise, and that Max Homa is now alongside them having only just finished ahead of Thorbjornsen in the end. That said, I was very taken with the way Homa spoke to the media and much of his play. In the end, he and Thorbjornsen would be the two I came closest to siding with, conditions expected to be more in their favour than Kanaya’s.
And yet that blend of a new venue, classy but questionable favourites, and a disruptive weather forecast leaves me back at square one, unsure of what to expect from the course and the conditions, never mind the players themselves. Without an angle to pursue, there are no recommended bets.
Posted at 1915 BST on 06/10/25
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