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Golfweek’s Adam Woodard previews the 2020 Zozo Championship at Sherwood Country Club, where Tiger Woods will try to defend his title at a course he really likes.
Golfweek’s Adam Woodard previews the 2020 Zozo Championship at Sherwood Country Club, where Tiger Woods will try to defend his title at a course he really likes.
It’s been almost a year since Tiger Woods tied Sam Snead’s mark of 82 career PGA Tour victories.
It’s been almost a year since Tiger Woods tied Sam Snead’s mark of 82 career PGA Tour victories. To be more precise, it’s been 355 days since Woods hoisted the trophy at the inaugural Zozo Championship.
He’ll get the chance to get No. 83 this week at a place he’s familiar with: Sherwood Country Club just outside Thousand Oaks, California. Woods hosted the Hero World Challenge at Sherwood from 2000-2013.
The 44-year-old’s 82nd win is his most recent victory on Tour. Since that win, Woods has played seven times, finishing fourth at the Hero World Challenge, T-9 at the Farmers Insurance Open and 68th at the Genesis Invitational. After the Tour paused its season in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Woods competed four times. His best finish was a T-37 at the PGA Championship. He did not make the Tour Championship after finishing T-51 at the BMW Championship.
The 15-time major champion most recently missed the cut at the U.S. Open last month after shooting rounds of 73-77 at Winged Foot.
“I am excited to defend my title at the (Zozo Championship,)” Woods wrote on Instagram about three weeks ago on the day he committed to the event. “It is disappointing that we will not be able to play in Japan this year, but Sherwood Country Club will be a great backdrop for what I know will be a great Championship.”
Last year’s Zozo was the first-ever Tour event in Japan. This week, the Zozo will make a one-time stop at Sherwood, one of the many changes to the golf schedule brought on by the global coronavirus pandemic.
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Rory McIlroy said playing at Shadow Creek and Sherwood Country Club will prove pivotal in his pursuit of his first green jacket.
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NORTH LAS VEGAS – Rory McIlroy found an ideal place to prep for the November Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.
Across the country in the southwest portion of the United States.
McIlroy said Wednesday that this week’s CJ Cup at Shadow Creek in the Mojave Desert and next week’s Zozo Championship at Sherwood Country Club in a lush forest north of Los Angeles will prove pivotal in his pursuit of his first green jacket and completion of the career Grand Slam.
Both tournaments were relocated from East Asia due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, McIlroy changed his itinerary.
“I was saying with how good the greens are here and how slopey and how fast and how the course is set up, it’s actually not a bad place to prepare for Augusta,” McIlroy said Wednesday at Shadow Creek. “It’s bent, the same conditions you’re going to get there in terms of grass anyway. Climate’s going to be a bit different, but it’s not bad preparation.
“It’s on the other side of the country, it’s not as close, but when you think about the courses that we play leading up to Augusta, they’re all Bermuda for the most part. I think here this week and Sherwood next week, I think that’s going to be a lot of guys’ last event before Augusta and I think they’re going to be two good courses. You both get 72 holes, which is a nice thing as well, so two really good weeks to see where your game’s at and then go home and work on some stuff before Augusta.”
CJ Cup: Tee times | Fantasy rankings | Odds | Shadow Creek
The new father – his daughter, Poppy, was born August 31 – is returning this week after a three-week break. In his last start, McIlroy tied for eighth in the U.S. Open. He also saw firsthand what beefed-up Bryson DeChambeau did to famed and rugged Winged Foot while winning by six shots.
The talk of golf has put on nearly 50 pounds of mass and started lashing the ball distances that have prompted some of his colleagues to try to follow suit.
That includes McIlroy.
During his break, the four-time major winner began working on dialing up his swing speed and distance. Two weeks ago he posted a photo on Instagram of his launch monitor that revealed the shot he had just hit was recorded at 186 mph ball speed with a 340-yard carry.
“Having length is an advantage and I’ve always been pretty long, but what I want to do is at least know that I have it if I need it,” McIlroy said. “I’m not going to try to do it all the time, I’m not trying to get my ball speed into the 190s every time I hit a driver, but at least I know that if I need to do it, I can do it.”
McIlroy said he’s done some speed work in the gym. He also went to a lighter shaft – from 75 grams to 60 – to improve his mechanics, but the switch means he can move the club fasters, which translates to more ball speed and more yards.
“One of the great things that Bryson’s done (is) when he speed trains, he just hits the ball into a net, so he doesn’t really know where it’s going, he’s just trying to move as fast as he can, and it’s trying to get your body used to moving that way and sort of making the target irrelevant for a time being and then you can sort of try to bring it in from there,” McIlroy said. “From what I’ve been experimenting with the last couple weeks, it’s the fastest I’ve ever moved the club, the fastest my body’s ever moved.
“I think it’s the way the game’s going. I got sent a really good article last weekend, it was in the Wall Street Journal just about every single sport becoming faster, longer, stronger, and I don’t think golf’s any different. I’m just trying to keep up with the way it’s going.
“It’s been fun trying to do it. I don’t know how Bryson does it every day. You hit drivers really hard one day and you sort of have to back off for a couple days and do it again. It seems like he’s got a lot of robustness in that body that he can keep doing it day after day.”
Well, McIlroy will try to speed up from time to time.
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Tiger Woods will defend his 2019 title at the Zozo Championship at Sherwood after the event moved from Japan to California.
Tiger Woods will defend his title at the Zozo Championship.
Woods announced Wednesday he committed to the Zozo Championship at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California.
“I am excited to defend my title at the (Zozo Championship,)” Woods wrote on Instagram. “It is disappointing that we will not be able to play in Japan this year, but Sherwood Country Club will be a great backdrop for what I know will be a great Championship.”
The second annual tournament will not return to Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba, Japan, this season due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The event will still be played on its original dates, Oct. 22-25, despite the change in location.
The inaugural Zozo Championship in 2019 made history as Woods earned his 82nd PGA Tour win, tying Sam Snead’s record.
The 44-year-old’s 82nd win is also his most recent victory on Tour. Since that win, Woods competed in seven Tour events, finishing fourth at the Hero World Challenge, T-9 at the Farmers Insurance Open and 68th at the Genesis Invitational. After the Tour paused its season in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Woods competed in four Tour events. His best finish was a T-37 at the PGA Championship. He missed the cut for the Tour Championship after finishing T-51 at the BMW Championship.
Last season, Woods also served as captain on the winning Presidents Cup team in December and defeated Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady in “The Match: Champions for Charity” alongside Peyton Manning.
The 15-time major champion most recently missed the cut at the U.S. Open after shooting rounds of 73-77 at Winged Foot.
The 2020 Zozo Championship is part of a three-event swing on the West Coast in October. The Zozo follows two events in Las Vegas: the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open at TPC Summerlin, Oct. 8-11 and the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek, Oct. 15-18.
The Zozo Championship is expected to return to Japan in 2021.
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Tiger Woods won the World Challenge five times at Sherwood Country Club and he’s the reigning champion of the Zozo Championship.
The PGA Tour is returning to Sherwood Country Club.
The $8 million Zozo Championship was shifted from Japan to Thousand Oaks on Monday, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tournament will be played Oct. 22-25, as part of a reconfigured West Coast swing ahead of the rescheduled Masters.
“When the pandemic started, I reached out to my contacts at the PGA Tour, LPGA and USGA and said, ‘Should there be a time in the future when there was a need for a course, Sherwood would be interested in being involved,’ ” said Sherwood general manager Rob Oosterhuis. “Fast forward to really just a couple weeks ago, when all of a sudden this came to fruition.”
The shift may mean Tiger Woods, the tournament’s defending champion, will return to Sherwood, which Oosterhuis labeled “a homecoming of sorts.”
“It’s another layer in the Sherwood lore of golf,” Oosterhuis said. “Tiger goes back 20 years with Sherwood.”
Sherwood previously played host to Greg Norman’s Shark Shootout from 1989 to 1999, the Showdown at Sherwood in 1999 and Wood’s World Challenge from 2000 to 2013.
Woods defeated David Duvall in the 1999 Showdown and won the World Challenge, sponsored over the years by Williams, Target, Chevron, and Northwestern Mutual, in 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2011.
“It’s great for everybody,” Oosterhuis said. “It’s great for golf. It’s great for the tour. It’s great for Zozo as the sponsor. In an unofficial way, it’s almost like (Woods) has his event back here on a bigger scale with much higher stakes, too.”
The Zozo Championship at Sherwood will be held a week before the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek, which was shifted to Las Vegas from South Korea. Together with the Shriners Hospital for Children Open, which will also be held in Las Vegas on Oct. 8-11, the tournaments will form a refashioned West Coast swing, just weeks ahead of the Masters, which has been rescheduled for Nov. 12-15.
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The field will include the top 60 golfers in the FedEx Cup rankings, which means it would be the first professional tournament locally for Matthew Wolff, who finished 35th in the rankings as a rookie, and went to nearby Westlake High School.
“We have a great relationship with Matthew,” Oosterhuis said. “We’re very excited. We have tons of Westlake High graduates and Westlake High supporters at Sherwood. … They knew him growing up. It’s always nice when you’ve got your local to root for.”
Typically, Sherwood would spend a year preparing for a big event. The runway for this tournament is seven weeks.
“Fortunately, October is a good time of the year for golf conditions locally,” Oosterhuis said. “We moved up the aeration of our greens from Sept. 17 … to (Monday).”
“That’s probably the biggest thing that we had to do. …. You’d like to have maybe a little bit more of a runway, but we have an exceptional Director of Agronomy in Neil Edwards. I’m sure he and his team can handle it.”
The event is not expected to have spectators.
“As of now, we anticipate that this will be played similar to the bubble environment that the tour has had in its other events,’ Oosterhuis said. “I anticipate there’s going to be a lot of eyeballs on the event.”
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Sherwood hosted a PGA Tour Champions event the last four falls. Colin Montgomerie edged Bernhard Langer in a playoff to win the Invesco QQQ Championship last November.
Last year’s Zozo Championship was the first time the PGA Tour staged an official event in Japan. Woods won by three shots over Hideki Matsuyama for his 82nd career PGA Tour victory, tying Sam Snead for the record.
While it is moving to America, the Zozo Championship will operate as if it’s in Japan. The 78-man field will feature the top 60 players available from this year’s final FedEx Cup standings, 10 players from the Japan Golf Tour and eight exemptions — four from the PGA Tour, three from Japan and one unrestricted.
The temporary rearrangement was a big coup for the tour, especially since Zozo and CJ Group primarily do business in Japan and South Korea, respectively. Along with concerns about the coronavirus, players were reluctant to go to Asia this fall with the Masters having moved to Nov. 12-15.
Both tournaments will return to Asia next year.
Joe Curley covers sports for the Ventura County Star. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @vcsjoecurley
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The Zozo Championship will not be played in Japan as previously scheduled, but will be played Oct. 22-25 at Sherwood Country Club.
The Zozo Championship is moving across the Pacific.
The second annual tournament will no longer return to Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba, Japan. Instead, it will be hosted by Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California, the PGA Tour announced late Monday.
The event will still be played on its original dates, Oct. 22-25.
As a result of the move, the 2020 event will be called the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
The 2019 Zozo Championship made history as Tiger Woods won the inaugural tournament at Accordia by three shots to tie Sam Snead’s record of 82 career PGA Tour victories.
PGA Tour Executive Vice President, International Ty Votaw said in a statement the Zozo Championship is expected to return to Japan in 2021.
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The event, which will feature a 78-player field and an $8 million purse at the Jack Nicklaus Signature designed course, is now part of a three-event West Coast swing in October. The Zozo Championship follows the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas, Nevada on Oct. 8-11 and the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas on Oct. 15-18.
“The PGA Tour is grateful that ZOZO Inc. has partnered with us to host the Zozo Championship at Sherwood this October,” Votaw said. “Considering Zozo Inc.’s main business is in Japan, the decision to hold its event in the U.S. underscores their commitment and support towards our sport, communities where we play and the PGA Tour. We are truly thankful for our partnership with ZOZO Inc. and the Japan Golf Tour Organization.”
Sherwood Country Club has hosted events such as Greg Norman’s Shark Shootout, the Chevron World Challenge hosted by Woods in 2011 and the Invesco QQQ Championship on the Champions Tour.
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