If there's such a thing as a horse for a course in golf, Hideki Matsuyama fits the bill at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Matsuyama, ranked fifth in the world, is the defending champion in the desert at TPC Scottsdale for the PGA Tour's most raucous tournament. He is one of the hottest golfers on the planet and has played this event three times and never been out of the top four finishers.
Matsuyama, sixth-ranked Jordan Spieth, No. 8 Justin Thomas and ninth-ranked Patrick Reed will lead a field of 132 players that includes 13 of the top 30 in the Official World Golf Ranking into action Thursday in the Valley of the Sun.
They will battle the par-71, 7,266-yard course and each other for a total purse of $6.7 million, $1.206 million of which will go to the winner on Sunday after 72 holes of competition.
Twenty-six of the top 30 in the current FedExCup standings are in the field, led by Thomas, who has won three times already this season and the past two events in which he's teed it up.
Record crowds are once again anticipated at the 2017 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Last year, more than 65,000 fans came out to TPC Scottsdale for Sunday's final round, helping to break a new weekly attendance record at 618,365.
That mark eclipsed the previous record of 564,368, set in 2015. All told, three attendance records were broken in 2016 -- the weekly attendance mark, plus record crowds on Friday (160,415) and Saturday (201,003).
Matsuyama, who began last year's final round trailing by three strokes at 10-under, birdied the 72nd hole to post a 4-under 67 and force sudden death with Rickie Fowler (who is also in this year's field). With a par on the fourth extra hole, No. 17, Matsuyama claimed his second career PGA Tour title in his 65th start on the PGA Tour.
Following his win in Scottsdale last year, Matsuyama went on to claim six more top-10 finishes, good for a season-long total of eight. Among them were a pair of seventh-place finishes at the Masters and Players Championship and a tie for fourth at the PGA Championship.
Matsuyama is off to an even stronger start this season. He claimed his third career PGA Tour win at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions and finished second at the CIMB Classic and SBS Tournament of Champions.
In his three appearances in this tournament, Matsuyama has finished tied for fourth, second and first.
"I'm not really sure whether it's the course, but I do know that the tremendous galleries that we have here just invigorates me and gets me going," Matsuyama said.
"I love playing here. I have played well the last six months or so, but I didn't have real good tournaments at Sony and Farmers, so I'm a little reluctant to say I'm in top form. Hopefully coming back to the desert, especially here in Scottsdale, revitalized me."
Spain's Jon Rahm, a first-time winner last week at the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, played collegiately at Arizona State in nearby Tempe. He made his first big splash on the PGA Tour in this event when he finished fifth as an amateur in 2015.
"The support I get from the fans here is unconditional," Rahm said. "I don't get this even almost when I go back home to Spain.
"This week I'm going to have to kind of isolate myself a little bit, try to keep doing what I would do in a regular tournament, even if I'm here or back home," Rahm added. "If I get caught up in the moment of just keep celebrating and trying to say hello to everybody that I've met over the years here in Phoenix, I feel like I will lose track of what I have to do this week. At the end of the day, I'm in another event and I'm here to hopefully win again. I have to keep myself reminding that."
Seven other past Waste Management Phoenix Open champions are also in the field: Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Kyle Stanley, Mark Wilson, Hunter Mahan, J.B. Holmes and Aaron Baddeley.
With this week's 28th start in the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Mickelson will be one start shy of the record shared by Gene Littler, Jim Ferrier and Jerry Barber.
