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.
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.”
Tiger Woods tees off on the 4th hole during the Pro-Am round of the World Challenge golf tournament, an unofficial PGA Tour event sponsored by pro golfer Tiger Woods, at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. Proceeds will benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation.
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.”
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
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.
