{"id":224654,"date":"2021-04-12T06:52:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T03:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/hideki-matsuyama-vanquishes-masters-pressure\/"},"modified":"2021-04-12T06:52:09","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T03:52:09","slug":"hideki-matsuyama-vanquishes-masters-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/hideki-matsuyama-vanquishes-masters-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"#Hideki Matsuyama vanquishes Masters pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Hideki Matsuyama vanquishes Masters pressure<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

AUGUSTA, Ga. \u2014 Pressure in sports and its level of intensity comes in all shapes and sizes. It differs from athlete to athlete and from event to event.<\/p>\n

For Hideki Matsuyama, who woke up Sunday morning with a four-shot lead entering the final round of the 85th Masters, he carried with him to the first tee a weight of pressure on his shoulders that perhaps no other player in golf has ever felt.<\/p>\n

Matsuyama carried the hopes of the entire nation of Japan with him to his 2:40 p.m. tee time Sunday. That exterior hope was the 15th club in his bag and one he\u2019d rather have left behind in the car or the clubhouse.<\/p>\n

Worse yet, Matsuyama had to attempt to sleep on Saturday night with the collective burden of expectation of 126 million golf-crazed Japanese people spooned beside him under the covers with all of their anticipation for a first-ever men\u2019s major champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt sorry for him [Saturday] night because I think [it] was probably one of the hardest sleeps he\u2019s ever had,\u2019\u2019 said South African Charl Schwartzel, who won the 2011 Masters, the same year Matsuyama was the low amateur. \u201cThere was a lot riding on him.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Matsuyama, en route to winning the Masters by one shot Sunday, had to overcome all of those things rattling around inside his mind as much as he had to stave off the likes of Will Zalatoris, Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth outside on Augusta National.<\/p>\n

That made his victory \u2014 the first man from Japan to win a major championship \u2014 as impressive as any we\u2019ve seen in recent memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe [had] a lot of pressure on himself,\u2019\u2019 Spieth said. \u201cI remember the feeling on a four-shot lead, and he\u2019s got Japan on his back and maybe Asia on his back. I can\u2019t imagine how that was trying to sleep on that, even with somebody who\u2019s had so much success. I think the way he\u2019s been able to withstand it \u2026 it\u2019s really good for the game<\/a> of golf globally.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Hideki
Hideki Matsuyama<\/figcaption>
Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What people don\u2019t see when Matsuyama plays tournaments \u2014 not just major championships, but every tournament \u2014 is the throng of Japanese media<\/a> that shadow his every move. There isn\u2019t a thing he does that\u2019s not captured by a camera lens and scrutinized by the eyes of multiple reporters.<\/p>\n

Matsuyama, before this victory, already was rock star in Japan, but a very reluctant one. He\u2019s so private that even his peers on the PGA Tour are tongue-tied when asked to share an anecdote about him.<\/p>\n

One thing that\u2019s certain, though, is Matsuyama\u2019s significance to his country.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a bit like a Tiger Woods to the rest of the world, Hideki in Japan,\u2019\u2019 Adam Scott said.<\/p>\n

When he was asked on Saturday night, after his third-round 65 set the stage for Sunday\u2019s win, about the large contingent of Japanese media that usually follow him being significantly pared down this week because of COVID-19 and fewer credentials issued, he delivered an honest and sobering answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure how to answer this in a good way, but being in front of the media is still difficult,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cI\u2019m glad the media are here covering it, but it\u2019s not my favorite thing to do, to stand and answer questions. So, with fewer media, it\u2019s been a lot less stressful for me, and I\u2019ve enjoyed this week.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

These things cannot be tangibly measured, of course, but the lack of Japanese media present at Augusta had to help ease nerves Sunday.<\/p>\n

Reiko Takekawa, a Japanese golf writer based in California who was not credentialed this week, could not help but notice through her television screen a different Matsuyama than the person she\u2019s covered her entire career.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s seemed very relaxed today, and he\u2019s been smiling, which you don\u2019t see that often,\u2019\u2019 she told The Post by phone. \u201cHis mental outlook has looked very, very good today.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Asked what Matsuyama\u2019s relationship with the Japanese press is, Takekawa said, \u201cOh, bad. Very bad. He\u2019s always, always reading everything, all the articles written in Japan about him. Every single story. I told Bob [Turner, his interpreter] to tell him to stop doing that.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

After his victory, Matsuyama said he \u201ccan\u2019t imagine what it\u2019s going to be like\u2019\u2019 when he returns home, adding, \u201cWhat a thrill and honor it will be for me to take the green jacket back to Japan. I\u2019m really looking forward to it.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The irony to his victory is that Matsuyama has rid himself of the pressure to win a major but ratcheted up intensity of the very unwanted attention to himself that he detests.<\/p>\n

The price of a green jacket.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Hideki Matsuyama vanquishes Masters pressure” AUGUSTA, Ga. \u2014 Pressure in sports and its level of intensity comes in all shapes and sizes. It differs from athlete to athlete and from event to event. For Hideki Matsuyama, who woke up Sunday morning with a four-shot lead entering the final round of the 85th Masters, he carried…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/Hideki-Matsuyama-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[101630,71653,71941],"class_list":["post-224654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-4-11-21","tag-hideki-matsuyama","tag-the-masters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}