Two-green system in play at ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP

Yes. You are seeing double.

The keen observer will notice something interesting at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP this week – each hole has two greens.

Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club is much like many Japanese golf courses in this way, a design method left over from the days before technology allowed hybrid grasses to be able to withstand a wide array of weather conditions.

Because summers could tend to be hot and humid and winters short and cold in Japan, it was once very challenging to maintain great greens year round. So courses would prepare two greens, one for summer and one for winter.

You would typically see summer greens with Bermuda or zoysia grass and winter greens with bentgrass.

But during the last decade, the development of hybrid grasses has meant superintendents can now use a uniform turf – which is the case at Accordia now with bentgrass. Some courses have since moved to a single green system while others continue to maintain two.

In a first for the PGA TOUR, this tournament will actually utilize both greens on the long par-4 fourth. From the tee players face a lake down the left side. The left “A” green adds an additional 20 yards to the hole and has out-of-bounds long. The right “B” green is heavily guarded by water and two bunkers. The greens will never be simultaneously in play but will be used in alternating rounds.

“I've never seen that. It still freaks me out because I see the hole one way and the green might be somewhere else,” young star Collin Morikawa said. “It's going to be interesting how guys play, but I think it will be really fun. It's something different, something you don't see every day, especially in the United States. I don't know a place that has two greens unless you're playing soccer golf.”

Local favorite Hideki Matsuyama spoke of the importance of finding the fairway. He saw it up close in the MGM Resorts The Challenge: Japan Skins earlier this week, and how tough it plays after finding the water from the tee. On that afternoon he had a choice of green to go for but couldn’t get there until his fourth shot. He won’t get the luxury of choice during the tournament.

“If you don’t hit the fairway it is a very long hole,” Matsuyama said. “It will be a challenge for the players and one that will have a bearing on the result for sure.”

In the skins game, only Rory McIlroy reached a green in regulation with Jason Day coming up short despite being in the fairway. Tiger Woods found the grass between the two greens on his approach.

McIlroy and Woods walked away with pars but Day would have dropped a shot had it been stroke play.

Matsuyama would have been seeing double in more ways than one.