We will enter the final round of the event in a decent position unit-wise, as a 1-0-1 day in round three for in-tournament matchups will add to our positively trending pre-tournament bet of Kurt Kitayama -115 over Min Woo Lee (up seven).
We should have gotten the sweep yesterday after Chan Kim got past Kensei Hirata and Seamus Power sat up three on Taylor Moore with three holes to play. However, that wager went from what would have been a terrible push at that moment to a pretty successful push after Moore made a 22-foot birdie on 16, Power double-bogeyed the easiest hole on the course when he played his 18th and Moore missed a 3-foot putt that would have swung the pendulum against us had it dropped for birdie on his final hole.
The first course of action to guarantee a winning week would be to have Kitayama close the show in round four against Lee, but I will back one more wager for this contest in round four, which I will discuss briefly in this article.
ZOZO Championship Round 4 Picks, Predictions
Harry Hall -110 over Gary Woodland (bet365)
I found this close regarding who I wanted to use when fading Gary Woodland between Chan Kim or Harry Hall.
My model very marginally wanted me to choose Kim over Hall. However, for a safety market like the one we have here, especially when trying to beat just one other golfer, Hall's profile had more intangibles that I trusted since we already found ourselves somewhat lucky to escape with a victory when we backed Kim in round three over Hirata.
I talked a little pre-event about how my math did like Woodland after posting back-to-back top-16 finishes and landing third in my sheet for recent ball striking. That is one reason I played a chalkier version of him for DFS at roughly market consensus. Still, a late-to-act failure from the market is taking place here for someone who looks much better on the leaderboard sitting in 29th than the actual production we have received from him this week.
Woodland ranked 65th out of 77 players in his projected score when the actual ball-striking metrics were combined with his baseline short-game totals.
ZOZO Championship Leaderboard
You are going to notice a name like Hall performing just about where he should be (29th overall, should be 25th), but my back-end interest in his safety lands with this profile that 1. very quickly moves to near Kim's projection when we remove his most unfortunate approach shot in round three that found the water and 2. realize that he is massively underperforming on the par-five holes compared to any of his counterparts, especially Woodland.
My math did find one of the stranger outputs for Hall this week on those three holes pre-event since he carried noticeable upside totals but poor overall scoring (picture describes that below), but his pure birdie-making upside should be in store for some positive regression in round four.
On the flip side, Woodland's combustibility has been present all week. He landed next to Max Greyserman and Ryo Ishikawa as the only three golfers in this event to overachieve their ball-striking on the leaderboard by at least 10 spots each day.
None of that guarantees that Woodland won't find some magic with his otherwise lacking driving or approach play, but give me the safety of Hall for a course that does have danger looming in multiple locations.
