CJ Cup At Nine Bridges Preview: The Korean Stop

What is it? CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges

Where is it? Nine Bridges

Where is that? South Korea

Defending champ? Justin Thomas

How long we been doing this? Since 2017

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The weird first portion of the PGA Tour’s wraparound season continues this week and it continues with international flare. The boys are in South Korea at just the second ever CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges. At last year’s inaugural event, late fireworks led to JT eventually taking down Marc Leishman in a playoff.

The theme this week is money. To lure the guys to the other side of the world, the Tour puts a massive purse on this thing. $9.5M total with $1.7M going to the winner. And there’s no cut.

History

Here it is. Here’s what happened. Here’s the history.

The Track

Look I’m not going to pretend like I know a lot about this Korean golf course we’ve only seen once. So here are some pictures.

It looks nice. Leish and JT got into a playoff at 9-under last year; any time we’re talking single digits, it’s tough.

Clubhouse

So I SCOURED the internet to find whatever I could on this thing. Boy did I succeed. Read this shit:

haesley nine bridges golf club house
-ecological transparency

new way of maximizing timber structure as the most sustainable building material
this clubhouse in the golf course located from seoul to the south in the place of one hour by the car. it is composed of three buildings of the clubhouses for regular members and vip members, and the accommodation for vip members. each building is composed of three different structure systems. the regular members clubhouse building is composed of the wooden hexagon grid shell, and this ecological and natural ventilated concept of hexagon pattern occurred from korean traditional summertime pillow (called” bamboo wife”).
the vip accommodation building is a small span of the steel structure in a residential scale. the vip members clubhouse building is the reinforced concrete structure. each building has sublimed in the modern referring to traditional construction of south korea.

innovation and sustainability
the most innovative feature is the hexagon grid shell roof made of wood. this wooden structure is fire-resistant and the roof and columns are exposed in the interior spaces. in modern building technology even though there are mainly three structural materials, steel, concrete and wood but wood is the only renewable materials. the professor klaus richter of swiss federal laboratories for materials testing and research has presented an interesting result from his research comparing the total amount of co2 d by three different materials, steel, concrete and wood through the process of procuring the materials to the completion of the building.

Hexagon grid shell roof! Electric! I love this thing.

Clubhouse grade, 9.5.

The Field

In a very cool move, the CJ Cup welcomes the top 3 players from the Korean Tour, the top player from the Asian Tour, the top Korean from the Asian Tour, the winners of the Korean Tour’s KPGA Championship and Genesis Championship, and the next 3 available Korean players from the official world golf rankings as of October 9th. Those guys get to stack their games up against the world’s best, and to do it in front of their home crowds.

It’s a small field, just 78.

Star power: Justin Thomas, Jason Day, Brooks Koepka, Jason Dufner, Hideki Matsuyama, Ian Poulter, Ernie Els, Adam Scott.

Predictions

Winning Score

I’m not overly familiar with this season’s weather patterns in South Korea, so I’m going to have to rely solely on historical scoring data here. Luckily we have one full year to go off of. Could should play similar to how it played last year.

Winning score, -11.

Winner

I watched an Instagram Live the other day of Jason Day testing new irons on the range and he was FLUSHING the ball. Sounded unlike anything I’d ever heard save for the U.S. Open, PGA, and Ryder Cups this year when I stood 20 feet behind Tiger for every single range swing he took.

Jason finished T11 here last year. Winner, Jason Day.

Dark Horse

There’s a man who definitely would win this kind of event and would win it now and would do it as a 50/1 dog.

That man is the visored one himself. Dark horse, Ian Poulter.

The Steven Bowditch/Smylie Kaufman Memorial DFL Award

I’m obsessed with this guy’s name so I really wanted to publish it somewhere. Also he’s 1,000/1 this week. Easy choice.

DFL, Dong-Seop Maeng.

Speaking of Bowditch, our buddy’s having the Tiger fusion surgery. Best of luck to Bowdo on a speedy recovery.

Coverage

Golf Channel’s got this one. And we get some WILD times due to this being across the world. Not a bad weekend to throw a few loopy wagers out there and watch ‘em come in on Friday and Saturday nights.

Wednesday: 10 p.m.-2 a.m. (Live)
Thursday: 10 p.m.-2 a.m. (Live)
Friday: 10 p.m.-2 a.m. (Live)
Saturday: 10 p.m.-2 a.m. (Live)

PS — Look at GC’s lineup. What can’t Rich Lerner do?

Play by Play: Rich Lerner
Analyst: Frank Nobilo
Tower: Phil Blackmar
On-Course: Jim Gallagher, Jr.

Final thoughts

We took a ton of listener questions this week and had a BLAST doing it. You’ll laugh with us, listen up if you haven’t yet.

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Also, coming soon.

Enjoy Nine Bridges.