The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Late struggles can’t deny Masters champ
AUGUSTA — The green-jacketed blue bloods at Augusta National are forever going on about growing golf globally. It’s a seed they have planted far and wide for years now. And all it takes is one look around this joint to know that what they plant tends to bloom in profusion.
Thus, behold Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama on Sunday, in full flower.
In what amounted to a moderate stress test by this tournament’s rigorous standards, Matsuyama won a Masters for himself, for his country. His was a victory that needed to be viewed from a series of very different perspectives, from tight and up close to practically a space station vantage.
His one-shot victory was the first ever in the Masters by a Japanese golfer. Now, finally, every inhabited continent has a representative in the Masters champions locker room. All that’s left is for some Antarctic penguins to develop a strong short game.
Augusta National has a long-standing and nurturing
relationship with its new champion. He qualif i ed for the first two of his 10 Masters appearances through the Asia-pacific Amateur Championship, an event organized by the hosts of the Masters and the British Open as part of the grow-the-game agenda. That relationship got a whole lot more personal Sunday. Like part of the lore personal.
Matsuyama began the day with a four-shot lead, and he used every bit of it. When he’s on, as Jordan Spieth said, “It’s a real stripe show.” The striping of the ball all hap- pened Saturday, when Mat- suyama emerged from a rain delay and went 3-under on his last five holes to finish off what was the co-low round of the tournament, a 65. That was the capital he’d live on throughout Sunday.
His wasn’t a perfect vic- tory by any means. He butchered the par-5 15th, splashing his second shot into the pond back of the green. He finished bogey-bogey and carded a 1-over 73, the high- est fourth-round score by a Masters winner since Trevor Immelman’s 75 in 2008. It’s just that no one else could get a strong enough grip on
Sunday to apply real, sustained pressure.
His lead would swell to as much as six shots as he was entering Amen Corner. Play- ing with Xander Schauffele, he saw that shrink to as little as two after his over-cooked shot to 15. Why the aggression, rather than laying up to that par 5? “Xander had made three birdies in a row. Hitting first (to the green at 15) and with his momentum, I wanted to birdie 15,” he said through his interpreter. Didn’t quite play that way.
With his fourth straight birdie at 15, Schauffele stood on the tee at the par-3 16th just two back of Matsuyama. Now he could really tighten the screws. Instead, he came undone. Schauffele found the water right of the green and didn’t come up for air until taking a triple-bogey 6.
Schauffele blamed it on the breeze. “I hit a perfect 8-iron. It was 184 yards. I can hit my 8-iron 180 yards out here. I turned it right to left. The wind was into left to right. It got smoked and eaten up. You could kind of see it. The ball hovered there,” he said.
Whatever, Matsuyama had all the advantage he needed. And he required it all, stum- bling in at the end.
It’s just that none of the serious challengers were able to push their score into the
60s, which seemed to be the least required to gain any real ground.
Of the four players closest to Matsuyama at the begin- ning of the day, only the least likely to handle the moment did so. Masters rookie Will Zalatoris, greener here than the grass, put up a very toughminded 70 to finish second at 9-under.
As for the other three — Schauffele (72 Sunday/tied for third at 7-under for the week), Marc Leishman (73/6under) and Justin Rose (74/5under) — they saved their high rounds of the week for the end. That is not the recommended way to come out of this thing smelling like a freshly mown lawn.
The Great Hall of Forgot- ten Pre-tournament Favorties also gained some significant additions Sunday:
Bryson Dechambeau put up his third round of 75 or worse, finished 5-over and in a tie for 46th, his worst finish in five appearances.
Justin Thomas couldn’t recover from his triple bogey on No. 13 Saturday, went over par again Sunday (73) and finished T-21.
Jon Rahm had the best round of the day, a 66, but teed off 2 hours 10 minutes before the leaders, no time for real contenders. He did climb from T-21 to T-5.
Spieth sputtered with three bogeys on his first six holes and rallied to shoot 70, good enough to tie for third.and that also left him in position to speak for his peers as to Matsuyama’s game.
Speaking before Matsuyama completed his round, Spieth testified: “He’s got a lot of pressure on himself today. I remember the feeling on a four-shot lead, and he’s got Japan on his back and maybe Asia on his back. I can’t imagine how that was trying to sleep on that, even with somebody who’s had so much success.
“I think the way he’s been able to withstand it — if he’s able to finish this one off — it’s really good for the game of golf globally. He’s a great young player who inevitably was going to win major championships. I know it’s his first win in quite a while (it had been 93 tournaments since the last of his five PGA Tour victories), so I can also relate to that. I can only imagine, if he closes this out, how that’s going to feel.”
A modest man by nature, they say, Matsuyama puffed up a little when asked if this breakthrough victory made him Japan’s greatest player.
“I can’t say I’m the greatest,” he said. “But I am the first to win a major. If that’s the bar, I set it.”