By Joel Beall
Eighteen holes separate Hideki Matsuyama from Masters greatness. His would be the rare win that transcends self, as his home nation of Japan desperately craves its first male major championship winner. Certainly, Matsuyama is a fitting candidate: 14 worldwide wins, seven career major top-10s, four Presidents Cup appearances and reaching as high as No. 2 in the World Ranking.

However, while Matsuyama can rid his country’s major monkey at Augusta National Sunday, he is far from the Land of the Rising Sun’s only star. Here are the best golfers of Japanese heritage.

Masashi “Jumbo” Ozaki
Known as Jumbo for his length off the tee, Ozaki led the Japan Golf Tour in winnings 12 times and is the circuit’s all-time victory leader with 94 (more than 40 more than his nearest competitor). He was ranked inside the Official World Golf Ranking top 10 for more than 200 weeks in his career, reaching as high as No. 5. Never won in America but did have three major top-10s, his best finish a T-6 at the 1989 U.S. Open. Inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2011.

Best known for the 1980 U.S. Open at Baltusrol, where he was tied with Jack Nicklaus for the lead after 54 holes, ultimately finishing second to the Golden Bear by two strokes. Became the first Japanese player to win on the PGA Tour by capturing the 1983 Hawaiian Open (now known as the Sony Open). Had five top-10s in majors in his career and 17 senior major top-10s. Is second to Jumbo Ozaki on the all-time JGT victories list with 51 titles.

Tommy Nakajima
Won 48 tournaments on the JGT and was the leading money winner four times. Nakajima logged six career top-10s in majors, highlighted by third-place finish at the 1988 PGA. Unfortunately, he’s often remembered for two blow-up holes: Making a 13 at Augusta National’s 13th hole during the 1978 Masters and putting into—and taking four shots to escape from—the Road Hole bunker while in contention at the 1978 Open Championship.

Getty Images

Shingo Katayama (pictured above)
Shared the lead at the 2001 PGA Championship after 36 holes, ultimately finishing T-4. Also came in fourth at the 2009 Masters thanks to a final-round 68, the best Augusta finish by a Japanese player. Led the JGT in earnings five times and racked up 31 wins. Because of his distinctive hats he was known as “Cowboy Shingo.”

Joe Ozaki
Younger brother of Jumbo, Joe was very much his own man with 32 JGT wins and another six global victories. Made more than 185 starts on the PGA Tour, his best finish a T-2 at the 1997 Buick Open and had three top-10s at the Players Championship. Member of the 1998 International Presidents Cup team, the only team to beat the Americans in the history of the event (Joe went 2-1 on the week).

Chung Sung-Jun

Ryo Ishikawa (pictured above)
Won on the JGT as a 15-year-old and was T-2 after 36 holes at the 2010 U.S. Open as a 19-year-old. Along with Rory McIlroy was once dubbed the “Arnie and Jack” of the post-Tiger generation. Although he never lived up to that hype, he has won 18 worldwide titles.

Shigeki Maruyama
Has three career top-10s at majors, his best finish a T-4 at the 2004 U.S. Open. Played on the 1998 and 2000 International Presidents Cup squads, and had a 5-0 record during the Internationals’ upset win in 1998. Maruyama won three times on the PGA Tour and has 12 other worldwide wins, but is best known for shooting a 58 during U.S. Open qualifying in 2000.

Masahiro Kuramoto
Finished T-4 at the 1982 Open Championship. Is sixth on the JGT’s all-time wins list with 30, and also won Japan’s Amateur Championship three times. Was the medalist at the PGA Tour’s 1992 Q School.

Kyodo News
Hideki Matsuyama

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By Daniel Rapaport
A little more than 10 years ago, a Japanese 17-year-old was golf’s can’t-miss kid. He’d just won his third tournament of the year on the Japan Golf Tour, and in doing so became the youngest golfer ever to crack the top 50 in the World Ranking. He seemed destined to become one of the game’s next superstars.

Fast forward a decade, and Ryo Ishikawa is grateful the superstars still recognize him.

“To see the likes of Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day—I was just really happy that they remembered me,” Ishikawa, now 28, said through an interpreter.

Ishikawa’s on the same stage as them at this week’s Zozo Championship, and his back-to-back 68s have him ahead of McIlroy and Day at the halfway point of the first PGA Tour played in his native country—and his first PGA Tour start since the Wyndham Championship in August 2017. The former prodigy is in the field at Narashino Country Club thanks to a strong 2019 season in his home country, having won twice on the Japan Golf Tour to claw back to the verge of the world top 100 at No. 104.

Calling Ishikawa’s career thus far a disappointment would be a bit harsh; he has won 17 professional events, which is no small feat. But given how things started, many figured Ishikawa would be winning majors in 2019, not the Shigeo Nagashima Invitational Sega Sammy Cup.

In 2007, Ishikawa was victorious in the first professional tournament he ever played … as a 15-year-old amateur. He finished 2008 ranked 30th in the world, and in 2009 he earned the ultra-rare special invitation to the Masters. In 2010, he shot a final-round 58 en route to a win in Japan, on the same day McIlroy shot 62 to win his first PGA Tour event.

That was seen as a harbinger of times to come—at the 2010 U.S. Open, McIlroy and Ishikawa grouped together, and The Guardian dubbed the duo the “Jack and Arnie of the post-Tiger era.” Wearing a bright-pink jumpsuit, Ishikawa smashed his rival-that-wasn’t by 11 and played in the penultimate group on Saturday at Pebble Beach. He faded on the weekend to finish T-3, but added two more wins in Japan that year. Things continued to trend upward into 2012, where a second-place finish in the Puerto Rico Open secured a PGA Tour card for the following season.

That’s when Ishikawa’s momentum halted. A maiden victory on the PGA Tour, the breakthrough that would lead to still more wins (the one McIlroy got out of the way early), never actually came. In total, Ishikawa made more than 140 starts on the PGA Tour but finished no better than that runner-up in Puerto Rico, managing only 11 top-10s.

“I was just really shocked to see how everyone was hitting it so long and so straight,” Ishikawa said of his first impressions of the PGA Tour. “The players who were longer than me were also straighter than me. That sent me on a downward spiral with the driver.”

Before the Zozo, Ishikawa last PGA Tour start came in August 2017. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

He tried to get longer to keep up. It didn’t work. He lost his playing privileges after finishing 175th on the FedEx Cup points list in 2017 and opted to return to Japan.

It has made all the difference. After struggling with a sports hernia and a muscle issue in his back, Ishikawa is finally at full strength this year and winning once again. He won back-to-back starts on the JGT this summer, bringing his career total to 16 wins—just nine away from receiving a lifetime exemption. That’s a target, he says, but not his main one.

“My target is cracking the world top 50, which would get me into the WGCs and the Masters,” he said. “That’s the goal, as well as getting into the Olympics. That would be awesome.”

A good weekend at the Zozo, against the players he used to tee it up against when he was a teenager, would go a long way toward that.

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At 15 years, six months and 27 days, Hill has eclipsed Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa for the world record. Ishikawa was 15 years and eight months old when he won the Japan Golf Tour’s Munsingwear Open KSB Cup in May 2007.

RELATED: Sir Nick Faldo, Danny Willett lead tributes as Hill announces himself to the wider golfing world

The Trump International Golf Club, Dubai member has achieved the feat in grand style too, a sensational eight-under 62 at Al Ain Equestrian Shooting and Golf Club helping him turn a three-stroke deficit into an eventual two-shot victory over overnight leader Harry Ellis (ENG).

Josh Hill is our Al Ain Open by Arena champion! He wins by two shots after a superb final round of 8-under par 62.@HarryEllisGolf is second and the leading professional at 15-under par.
Ben Schlottman and amateur Curtis Knipes are T3 at -13. pic.twitter.com/N0y3kENb6N

— MENA Tour (@theMENATour) October 23, 2019

Thailand’s Phachara Khongwatmai holds the record as the youngest winner of a professional event. He was 14-years old when he captured the Singhua Hin Open in July 2013 but the ASEAN PGA Tour event reportedly did not have OWGR status like the MENA Tour. Khongwatmai was seven months younger than the previous record-holder, Kiwi Lydia Ko, who won the New South Wales Open on the Ladies European Tour in January 2012 at age 14.

Hill becomes the fourth amateur winner on the MENA Tour and the second in three events this season after English 18-year-old Robin ‘Tiger’ Williams won the Journey to Jordan-2 Championship at Ayla Golf Club earlier this month. Now U.S.-based Dubai amateur Rayhan Thomas was the regional Pro-Am circuit’s amateur trailblazer after capturing his home Dubai Creek Open in 2016, a season before Dutchman Pierre Junior Verlaar won the Royal Golf Mohammedia Open in Morocco.

The MENA Tour’s remit is to provide a stepping stone to the world’s main tours and it is certainly helping its young members achieve global recognition. Hill’s is not the first world record; Thomas, now playing collegiate golf at Oklahoma State Unversity, equalled the world record for successive birdies – nine – during his defence of the Dubai Creek Open in 2017.

Hill is the 867^th ranked player in the official World Amateur Golf Ranking (WARG) and No 2072 in the professional OWGR. While he isn’t eligible for the winner’s cheque of US$13,500 (Ellis pockets that), both rankings are set to soar after his memorable week at Al Ain where he carded rounds of 65-66-62 for a winning total of 193, 17-under-par.

Amazing feat by young Josh Hill!

Becomes also the 2nd youngest player to ever earn #OWGR points, behind Guan Tian Lang who did it when he was still 14. Josh is tied for 2nd place in that stat. Phachara K. also earned his first OWGR points at 15y 6m 27d!https://t.co/Q7F1mW5nOb

— Nosferatu (@VC606) October 23, 2019

He clearly has an affinity with the par 70 layout in the “Garden City” of Al Ain, a city 170km inland of Abu Dhabi but within the emirate. Hill has won both the Faldo Series Middle East Championship and is the two-time defending champion of the Al Ain Open, and Emirates Golf Federation event, at AEGSC and has now twice shot 62 on the course, the first in last year’s Faldo Series event. The 62 is one shy of the amateur record set by Brazilian Herik Machado during the 2017 Faldo Series Grand Final but eclipse the professional course record at the 6,764-yard layout, a 63 by Alex Wrigley in the Mercedes-Benz International ProAm in February 2017.

Starting the day three shots behind overnight leader Ellis, a 12-footer putt straight into the heart of the cup on the first hole kick-started the teen’s title tilt.

A lip-out on the par-3 3rd from five feet denied him a second birdie, but the Joe Marshall-coached player  went on a tear after that, making four birdies in the next four holes. He then picked up further strokes on the 9th and 11th holes to be seven-under par at that stage and three ahead of Ellis, who had made the turn at one-under par.

The final birdie of the day came on the 14th, even though he had two more chances from close range after that.

“I really don’t know what to say right now. I am shocked,” said Hill afterwards.

“If you had told me during the summer that I will be winning a MENA Tour title against professionals and become the youngest ever winner of an OWGR event, I would have laughed at the notion. I guess hard work pays.”

The win has been brewing. After a lean spell with his driver over his UK summer campaign, the youngest member of the England U-18s squad recorded a T-6 finish at the Abu Dhabi Open a fortnight ago in what had been his best finish in the MENA Tour by Arena until today.

“I was struggling in the summer and then something changed in the last MENA Tour event at Yas Links. That top-10 finish gave me a lot of confidence and I knew it in my heart that I would do well here in Al Ain because I have such a good history here. I just love this track.

“I am actually a little disappointed with my finish because I missed so many opportunities coming in. I honestly could have broken 60 today. I knew I needed a good start, and once I got it, I just kept hitting one good shot after the other.”

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