No Dirt Thursday: Baycurrent Classic at Yokohama Country Club
Welcome to No Dirt Thursday!
Each week we give you a quick, useful briefing on the PGA TOUR stop: what changed, who won lately, what the course asks of players, and a few “only-here” nuggets you can drop on the timeline.
This week we are in Yokohama, Japan, at Yokohama Country Club for the rebranded Baycurrent Classic. It is a 78-player, no-cut event on a 7,315-yards composite course.
Yokohama Country Club sits just south of Tokyo, a 36-hole property with classic lines and a modern edge. It opened in 1960, and the West Course was reimagined in 2016 by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. For tournament week, the TOUR plays a composite setup using a modernized canvas, with bentgrass greens, Korai zoysia fairways, and Noshiba zoysia rough.
Tournament Purse: $8,000,000
Last three editions (before this year)
(Under the previous ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP banner)
2024 | Nicolás Echavarría | –20 (260) | won by 1 with a birdie for -3 beating out Justin Thomas and Max Greyserman | Read about it here.
Nico Echavarria celebrates a birdie during the final round of the 2024 ZOZO Championship.
Photo by TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP Getty Images via sbnation.com
2023 | Collin Morikawa | –14 (266) | won by 6 | Read about it here.
2022 | Keegan Bradley | –15 (265) | won by 1 over Rickie Fowler and Andrew Putnam | Read about it here.
Tournament history
Lintao Zhang via Golf Digest
Founded: Launched in 2019 as the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP, the TOUR’s first sanctioned event in Japan.
Venues: Primarily played at Narashino in Chiba. The 2020 edition moved to Sherwood CC in California due to the pandemic.
Move to Yokohama: 2025 will be the first year at the new location, sponsor, and name, the tournament retains the 78-player, no-cut format
Records (event all-time): Tiger Woods won the inaugural edition and tied Sam Snead’s all-time record of 82 PGA TOUR wins in 2019.
Tiger Woods of the United States poses with his trophy after winning the Zozo Championship PGA Tour at the Accordia Golf Narashino country club in Inzai, east of Tokyo, Japan, Monday, Oct. 28, 2019.
Lee Jin-man/AP via sportsnet.ca
About the host: Yokohama Country Club
Origins: Opened in 1960 as a 36-hole club with East and West courses by Takeo Aiyama.
Current site: Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. The tournament uses a composite routing this week which includes 16 holes from the West Course and 2 from the East with a par-71 at 7,315 yards.
Modernization: West Course overhaul completed in 2016 by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw with associate Toby Cobb. Double greens were converted to single greens, corridors were reshaped, tees and putting surfaces were rebuilt, and sub-air was added to support summer performance.
Plays like: Shot-maker’s parkland with tidy bunkering and subtle elevation changes, Yokohama rewards placement and touch. With thirteen par-4s and only two par-5s, it is a par-4-heavy exam where mid-iron control and spin management beat raw power. Zoysia fairways set the ball up while sticky rough punishes misses, so approach play and smart wedges into bentgrass greens decide it; clean grooves, no excuses.
Only-at-Yokohama moments
Golf Digest
Seve Ballesteros (1978): Out-dueled Graham Marsh in a playoff to win the Japan Open on the West Course, an early marker in Seve’s rise that put YCC on a global stage.
Yuki Inamori (2018): Four rounds in the 60s to post –14 (270) and win the Japan Open on a composite YCC, a calm and precise blueprint for solving this property's mysteries.
Keita Nakajima (2023) & Ren Yonezawa (2024): Back-to-back winners at the Yokohama Minato Championship on the Japan Golf Tour, –13 (271) for Nakajima and –22 (262) for Yonezawa, proof that YCC can be taken deep when firm conditions meet sharp wedges.
Numbers to watch this week
78 players | 4 rounds | 0 cuts: Everyone plays all four rounds, the low 72-hole total wins, and all finishers earn points and prize money.
Par 71 | 7,315 yards | Composite routing: Sixteen holes from the West and two from the East create a stitched layout that tightens flow and emphasizes precision over power.
13 par-4s | 2 par-5s | 3 par-3s: A par-4-heavy card where mid-iron proximity and tidy wedges from zoysia lies will separate the field.
On Deck
Next No Dirt Thursday: The PGA TOUR has a break between October 15th to the 21st and returns with the Black Desert Championship at Black Desert Resort.