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Oliver Brown: Reticent superstar Matsuyama gives millions of Japanese fans a Major cause to celebrate

Oliver Brown

Hideki Matsuyama en route to winning the 2021 US Masters. Getty Expand

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Hideki Matsuyama en route to winning the 2021 US Masters. Getty

Hideki Matsuyama en route to winning the 2021 US Masters. Getty

Hideki Matsuyama en route to winning the 2021 US Masters. Getty

It was 3.40am in Ehime Prefecture, 13 time zones from Augusta, when the region’s golfing icon launched his quest to become the first Japanese winner of a Major.

Not that the unsociable hour was a deterrent. But by 8am, the celebrations could truly begin.

When it comes to following Hideki Matsuyama, the reticent superstar with the staccato swing, almost any excess is indulged.

Once it was Ryo Ishikawa who had this poster-boy effect, drawing battalions of Tokyo journalists to his every event. But for the past eight years, their attention has been monopolised by Matsuyama, their surest bet to arrest a maddening wait for glory on a global stage.

The fascination is not reciprocal. Matsuyama, at 29, gives the impression he would rather be anywhere else than under the microscope of his 126 million compatriots.

As a public figure, he would make even Anthony Kim, the one-time heir to Tiger Woods who became such a recluse that his agent had to clarify “he’s not living under a bridge”, look like a party animal.

The Japanese media who stalk him as ravenously as hyenas have divined almost nothing about his private life in eight years.

In 2017, he announced that he had become a father. This came as a jolt to his inquisitors, who knew neither that his wife was pregnant nor even that he was married at all.

It is within the ropes at Augusta these past four days that Matsuyama has found some peace. Weary of having his every move shadowed, he has benefited from the drastic cuts to reporters on site due to Covid-19 restrictions.

“It’s not my favourite thing to do, to stand and answer questions,” he acknowledged. “With fewer media, it has been a lot less stressful for me.”

The effect of a clearer head on his golf has been appreciable.

In patches at this Masters, Matsuyama has produced brushstrokes the envy of anything painted on golf’s most pristine canvas.

When the sirens sounded for a storm midway through his Saturday round, he retired to his car to play video games.

He returned to deliver a back nine of 30, a sequence of outrageous quality, where his towering iron shots received their due reward on the rain-soaked greens.

He looked serene, put at his ease by Xander Schauffele speaking to him in Japanese, a reflection of the Californian’s cultural heritage on his mother’s side. How, though, would he cope with the suffocating pressure of trying to be the first Asian player to wear the green jacket? Quite well for the most part, it turned out.

Matsuyama had enjoyed a ceremony inside the Butler Cabin once before, when he was the leading amateur in 2011, but nothing compared to the pressure he felt standing on the first tee last night with almost his entire nation watching him via the Tokyo Broadcasting System.

It showed when he sprayed his opening drive right. But where others have capitulated after such a start, Matsuyama shored up his lead, realising that for all he was unused to these stakes, so too were most of his pursuers.

As he ticked through his front nine with par golf, his devoted fans 7,000 miles away sought to calm their crack-of-dawn nerves. The magnitude of what a Matsuyama victory would mean was colossal.

When it comes to golf-crazed countries, Japan ranks second in the world, behind only the US, with one course for every 57,000 people.

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It is all the more extraordinary given the game’s relatively limited history in the country. Not until 1904, when a British tradesman, Arthur Hesketh Groom, built a four-hole layout on the outskirts of Kobe was any golfing footprint established.

Since then, an obsession has been unleashed. First, Emperor Hirohito would retreat for the odd round with his wife. Then, as a Japanese middle class burgeoned during the post-war recovery, more disposable income was spent on this exotic leisure pursuit.

For its finest players, international success came quickly, with Torakichi Nakamura and Koichi Ono beating the decorated US duo of Sam Snead and Jimmy Demaret by nine at the 1957 Canada Cup. What a restless public has craved above all else, though, is a Major champion to call its own.

A decade ago, the anointed contender was Ishikawa. The teenage Ryo cultivated a vibrant persona, once announcing himself in electric yellow trousers with the words: “Hello America, I’m Ryo”.

As a young talent, he was exhilarating. But the relentless exposure turned him quickly from the “bashful prince”, as he was known, to the forgotten man. Once the results dried up, Hideki hysteria took over.

Already, his year is complicated by his starring role in this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. A Masters triumph would, he knew, elevate his idol status to overwhelming intensity.

All this considered, he shouldered his burden with extraordinary composure and grace – two traits which helped elevate him to his new-found status as a Major champion.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]

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