Another close call at the Bank of Utah Championship. Ben James could not get the putter going in the Black Desert, yet his ball striking allowed him to finish in a tie for fifth place. That's three top 5 results in a row and four in his last six starts. James did not make the trip to Japan, but at 59th in the FEC points list, we are going to see him continue to push his way into the first two Signature events. To put things quickly into perspective, Jackson Koivun is 65th on the same points list. As if one top 5 wasn't good enough, Auston Kim finished fourth in Hawaii. The young LPGA star played like we predicted and contended deep into Sunday evening. Ultimately Jeeno Thitikul took home her fourth title of the 2026 season. Thitikul started the week at +550 while Kim was +3500. We almost played the value game perfectly, but in the end it was just good enough for government work. Both the men and the women head to Asia for their next event. The PGA Tour planes must fly quicker as the guys go again on Wednesday night ET. The women will compete next week in Shanghai.
Fifteen players from the Presidents Cup, 13 team members, and two Vice Captains fill out a field of 72 players in Japan for the Baycurrent Classic. Xander Schauffele fired a sensational 64 on Sunday one year ago to take home the title. Max Greyserman needed to hole out from the fairway on the final hole to tie, and he almost did! Most fans remember this event as the ZOZO. A tournament which began in 2020 and won by the likes of Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Hideki Matsuyama, and Tiger Woods. There's $8 million in the purse, and the winner will receive $1.44 million. Well worth a trip overseas, especially if you can jump on a jet with two or three friends. Yokohama Country Club was the host venue in 2025. The first time hosting a PGA Tour event, the men are back in 2026 for the second Baycurrent Classic, Yokohama is the number one ranked public golf facility in Japan.
YES, this timer is correct. This is the first of FIVE straight weeks where golf begins on WEDNESDAY night! Please be aware and get those weekend wagers in on time.
Baycurrent Classic starts in...
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East AND west
A top 5 golf course in Japan overall, the golf experience at Yokohama CC includes an East and a West Course. For the championship routing, tournament officials use 16 holes from the West Course and two holes from the East. Upon the remote chance you have played YCC, here is the scorecard breakdown. Each hole for the Baycurrent Classic is listed with the actual hole in parentheses.
This collection of 18 skill examinations adds up to 7,322 yards and a par of 71. Unlike any other card on the PGA Tour, Yokohama has three par 3s, two par 5s, and THIRTEEN par 4s! Before we crown the par 4 strokes gained leader as the winner, Coore and Crenshaw have given this course a ton of character. Bentgrass greens with an average size of 6,500 sq/ft are surrounded by 47 bunkers. YCC has 73 bunkers total and six holes where water comes into play. Zoysia fairways should make the men happy as this agronomy is the equivalent to striking a shot off a range mat. Schauffele finished with a 19 under par total last year. Las Vegas has set the winning score over/under at 18.5 under par (265.5) for this edition. Eight of the 13 par 4s are under 450 yards in length. Can the guys take advantage of this course two years in a row? Five of the top 25 in the OWGR are teeing it up in Yokohama. As such, the tournament odds board looks like an LPGA event. Top heavy, starting with the favorite (and defending champion) Xander Schauffele at 10-1 (+1000), can one of the longshot majority capture the championship like Nico Echavarria did in 2024? Before we get to the outright predictions, let's first take a look at the forecast.
Course Conditions, Weather, Wind
Yokohama, Japan, received a historic amount of rain in September. Although the forecast for this week is perfect for the PGA Tour, 27.7" of rain to start the autumn typhoon season will have the turf playing soft. The field faced wet conditions in 2025 as the course received rain during Round 1. Temperatures are predicted in the mid to high 70s for each round, and the wind will be minimal, remaining in the single digits with gusts in the low teens. Thankfully, it has not rained for a few days, so there is a possibility of some drying, but overall, get ready for soft conditions and sub-par scoring.
Amidst all of the travel and assorted golf media stories of the week, do not lose sight of the fall objective: FedEx Cup points. Forty of the 72 players in Yokohama rest between 51 and 110 on the FEC Points list. The top 10 from the fall (51-60) receive an exemption into the first two Signature Series events in 2027. An incredible points boost, competing at Pebble Beach and Riviera can set you up for a season full of Signature starts, points and 2028's Championship Series! The second cutoff comes at the top 100. Rest inside triple digits and you maintain your Tour card for the 2027 season. Lose your card, and you may be looking at 2029 or later to climb back into the elevated tier. Not to mention with the influx of DP World Tour and LIV talent poised to position themselves as well, this is NOT the time to sacrifice status. Following the Baycurrent Classic, we have five more events to decide who will qualify for both. β As the PGA Tour prepares to build out their fall international lineup, the Baycurrent is positioned to be one of the pillars of this new section of the schedule. If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, it is worth paying attention to this event and more importantly the venue. We know the field has a dozen stars, and another 10 players from the Japan Tour. That leaves 50+ players in the middle from the current rank and file of the fall PGA Tour. Even though this is a 72-player, no-cut event, I believe the play represents a regular PGA Tour stop rather than a no-cut Signature event. Looking through last year's course report, the field averaged 291 yards off the tee and hit an average of 65% of their GIRs. The field also hit 69% of their fairways. In comparison, that puts driving distance near the Tour average, driving accuracy above, and GIRs slightly below. With only one event to measure, the lean is for approach over length. Player performance averages with no cut include the bottom of the field for four rounds. Don't get misguided by all of this. The very top of the 2025 leaderboard was full of total driving leaders. Smalley, Hoey, Schauffele, Wallace, Mitchell, and Thorbjornsen all send it with great accuracy. At that time last year, Michael Thorbjornsen led the Tour in SG: OTT and GIRs. Starting to get the picture? For a little clearer focus, let's dive even deeper.
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I think TPC Deere Run is the Swiss Army knife of golf courses on the PGA Tour. That sounds hyperbolic for an event that really gets zero recognition, but the combination of skills it takes to win the John Deere Classic is quite applicable to this week and many other regular Tour stops. A few other comp courses I am using for my Yokohama predication palette are: TPC Crag Ranch (Zoysia), TPC San Antonio, Pete Dye's Stadium Course, and Congaree. Determining comp courses involves a couple of layers of research. The first complimentary piece is the scorecard. Are we selecting a venue that mirrors the task at hand? Much like Jim Furyk making Captain's picks for Adare Manor, who fits the design AND the agronomy. We are using comparison venues to determine similar horses for courses, but what is often overlooked is the field associated with both events. You will notice very quickly that none of the comps for this week host major championships. Relative fields are a huge part of the equation. Not just because they can comparatively help us understand scoring, but they also give us a great depiction of how the middle tier competes against one another. β Guys were aggressive with the driver at YCC last year. Most of the fairways were much like your standard TPC layout. Narrow enough to give the field a little pause, but not penal to the point where guys were holding back. I love the Valero and John Deere comps for this player characteristic. With so little history at Yokohama, who in this field can gain strokes against their peers off the tee? Xander Schauffele hit all 15 fairways last year in the final round and shot 64. By putting himself in great position to attack with his irons, he gave himself a massive edge. Eight of the final nine holes (when played in order) favor a fade off the tee. A quick playability note that will come into play over the weekend. Right-handers who play a fade will feel more comfortable closing out their round. Factor in there are no par 5s after the sixth hole and getting the ball in play on the back nine becomes even more important. There are many weeks where driving is not part of the path to success, with wet conditions at Yokohama this week is not one of them. β The top 5 last year were 14 under par or better. That included eight players with ties. Creating scoring chances across any Coore-Crenshaw course takes elite approach play. They consistently kind of lull you to sleep with their green complexes. Take a look for this on television during the coverage. Most of the putting surfaces will melt into the surrounding closely mown areas. Where's the edge of the green? Couple that aesthetic with perfectly positioned bunkers possessing jagged edges that break up the landscape. The result is an incredible combination of simple design and elaborate eye candy. Hole locations are placed along the edge of shelves or plateaus and along the green's edge. Picking the best approach target can be a challenge. C & C gives amateurs a place to bail out and tons of short grass to putt from in order to make bogey. These 72 players are attempting to make birdies. Looking back through the footage and hole locations in 2025, there's a tricky pattern of positioning pins where average iron players could not attack them. I'm really leaning into iron play this week. Our winner is going to gain 8+ strokes on the field with their approach game. Get too aggressive and architects will burn you, attack when you are playing from the fairway with a scoring club in hand and seize the moment.
West Course Hole 6 - #13 for the Baycurrent Classic
Keeping in line with the Coore-Crenshaw theme, this is an ARG week. I'm putting a heavy dose of successful scramblers on the card. The combination of closely mown areas and bunkering surrounding these green complexes with soft lies will keep the average short game players in check. As part of a second tier of considerations, five holes have close range scoring opportunities. The best scramblers not only save par, but they are more than capable of scoring from close range. To further drive this edge home, with only two par 5s and 13 par 4s, any par 4 under 425 yards becomes a sub-par scrambling moment. To achieve Schauffele's 19 under par total, the winner will need somewhere in the ballpark of 28-30 birdie chances. Pitching the ball to five or six feet and making birdie is far easier than canning a 25' putt. I brought this up in the opening, but there are 47 greenside bunkers. With no GCSAA sheet, I counted them! Going back to the comps, Congaree and TPC San Antonio are two of the more challenging (non-major) courses on the PGA Tour and Yokohama fits right in with them. β New venues always give an edge to good putters. We've covered this point for three weeks in a row having players compete at the Biltmore, Black Desert, and Presidents Cup. Flatstick experts control the roll, read the greens, and simply convert more birdie opportunities. The greens at YCC did not give the television viewer (or players) a challenging impression. Much like last week in Utah, if you can make putts, you will. Between the weeks off, transition to match play and now back to stroke, and so many new venues in a row, I think the Jacob Bridgemans of the world will be in play. Can the Clemson alumni win again this quickly? Jacob's won twice in 2026 and if he wins again will match the three win total of his Tiger football team! The picks and extended card are listed below. Time to forget the top 5 finishes of late and win again. What do you say Wyndham..?
Outright Winners - Baycurrent Classic
Do not be fooled by Wyndham Clarkβs 1-4-0 record at Medinah. Clark was a ball-striking machine and impressive with the putter. Wyndham finished third for the week in SG: TOT and fourth for putting. Translate that fine form to a venue that suits Clark along with the agronomy. The only two-time winner on Zoysia fairways this season, Wyndhamβs a combined 47 under par in those two tournaments. What better way to finish off an incredible year than with a fourth win in the fall?
In the last four years, Billy Horschel has two PGA Tour and two DP World Tour wins. Both of those overseas wins came in the fall at the BMW PGA Championship. A traveler his entire career, Horschel has already played both fall series events. Number 100 on the FEC points list, Billy cannot take any weeks off until he wins or cashes in a couple of high finishes. A T13 last week in the Black Desert, Yokohama CC is a much better fit for this ball striker. A parkland course scoring machine, Horschel has the complete skill set needed to make the Baycurrent career win number 11.
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