The Zozo Championship (

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

: ''ゾゾ・チャンピオンシップ'') is a professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

tournament in

Inzai file:Inzai city hall.JPG, 260px, Inzai City Hall is a Cities of Japan, city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 105,463 in 42,388 households and a population density of 850 persons per km². The total are ...

Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Chiba Prefecture has a population of 6,278,060 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Chiba Prefecture borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north, Saitama Prefecture to the ...

, which is located in the

Greater Tokyo Area The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, consisting of the Kantō region of Japan (including Tokyo Metropolis and the prefectures of Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tochigi) as well as the ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It is co-sanctioned by the

Japan Golf Tour The Japan Golf Tour ( ja, 日本ゴルフツアー機構) is a prominent golf tour. It was founded in 1973 and as of 2006 it offers the third-highest annual prize fund out of the regular (that is not for seniors) men's professional tours after th ...

and the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also k ...

and has been sponsored by ZOZO, a Japanese clothing brand, since the event's inception in 2019.

History

The tournament is the first event sanctioned by the PGA Tour in

, in a deal that will last until at least 2025. It would also be co-sanctioned by the

Tiger Woods Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer. He is tied for first in PGA Tour wins, ranks second in men's major championships, and holds numerous golf records. * * * Woods is widely regarded as ...

won the inaugural event for his 82nd PGA Tour victory. This tied the all-time record set by

Sam Snead Samuel Jackson Snead (pronounced English_phonology">sni:d.html" ;"title="English_phonology.html" ;"title="nowiki/>English phonology">sni:d">English_phonology.html" ;"title="nowiki/>English phonology">sni:d May 27, 1912 – May 23, 2002) was an ...

. In 2020, the tournament was moved to

Sherwood Country Club Sherwood Country Club is a private, member owned golf and country club in Lake Sherwood, California set at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains just south of city of Thousand Oaks. Sherwood is home to a championship 18-hole Jack Nicklaus signatur ...

Lake Sherwood, California Lake Sherwood is an unincorporated community in the Santa Monica Mountains, in Ventura County, California overlooking Lake Sherwood reservoir. It is a body contact lake, swimming, fishing, SUP and boating allowed, located south of the Conejo Vall ...

in October, due to ongoing travel restrictions because of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. Ultimately, the 2020 event became a sole-sanctioned PGA Tour event and had no involvement from the Japan Golf Tour. The tournament returned to Japan in 2021 as well as being sanctioned by both the PGA Tour and the Japan Golf Tour. However, it was an unofficial money event on the Japan Golf Tour.

Hideki Matsuyama is a Japanese professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour. He is the first-ever Japanese professional golfer to win a men's major golf championship the 2021 Masters Tournament. As of January 2022, Matsuyama has 17 worldwide wins, eight car ...

eagled the final hole to win in his home country by five shots ahead of Brendan Steele and

Cameron Tringale Cameron Joseph Tringale (born August 24, 1987) is an American professional golfer. Born in Mission Viejo, California, Tringale was a three-time NCAA All-American at Georgia Tech. He was a member of the PGA Tour from 2010 until 2022, when he resig ...

Field

The 78-player field consists of: * Top 60 available

players from the previous season's FedEx Cup standings. * Top 7 players in the current season

money list through the

Bridgestone Open The was a professional golf tournament in Japan, sponsored by Bridgestone. Founded in 1972, it had been an event on the Japan Golf Tour since in inaugural season in 1973. From 1972 to 1984, the title of the event was the Bridgestone Tournament, be ...

. * Top 3 players in the Bridgestone Open. * 8 sponsor exemptions.

Winners

Notes

References

External links

*
Coverage on the PGA Tour's official siteCoverage on the Japan Golf Tour's official site
{{coord, 35.813, 140.144, display=title, type:event Japan Golf Tour events PGA Tour events Golf tournaments in Japan Golf in California Sport in Chiba Prefecture Recurring sporting events established in 2019 2019 establishments in Japan