Golf’s Rising Star from the East（1/2）
Don Riddell （Anchor of CNN「Living Golf」）
In 1997, a young man named Tiger Woods emphatically announced his arrival to the world. He did it by thrashing the field at Augusta to win his first Masters title, and a multicultural assortment of children made sure we all remembered him, looking us in the eye for an iconic Nike TV commercial and stating: “My name is Tiger Woods”.
Thirteen years and a total of fourteen major titles later, Tiger has lived up to his potential. But we know him now as a flawed genius and the man is a shadow of his former self. The world of golf is welcoming a new generation of young, gutsy and iconic stars; they are kids who were inspired by Tiger, who idolized Tiger, and who now want to usher Tiger Woods off the world stage.
America has Rickie Fowler and Europe has Rory McIlroy, both are 21. Meanwhile, millions of golfers in Asia and, maybe soon the world, are wishing their name was ‘Ryo Ishikawa’.
“I don’t think I’ll see anyone else like this while I’m still alive,” says Takehiro Hayashi, the executive director of Japan’s Junior Golf Development Association. He’s spent forty years identifying and developing talent, and this is as good as it’s ever going to get, “a player as talented as this only comes along once every hundred years.”
Ishikawa has only just turned nineteen, but he is an old hand at breaking records. In junior high school, he was a national champion, however it wasn’t until he was given a sponsor’s exemption to play in the 2007 Munsingwear Open KSB Cup that anyone really glimpsed his potential. Bad weather meant he had to play two rounds on the Sunday with a six AM start. Watched by just a few friends and family when he teed off, Ishikawa stormed to victory with scores of 69 and 66. He was still four months short of his sixteenth birthday.
By almost four years, Ishikawa had broken the record of the youngest winner on any tour, Seve Ballesteros. He turned professional the following year and more records featuring the words ‘the youngest to’ soon followed. No one in the history of the game has broken into the world’s top 100 and top 50 quicker than Ishikawa, not even Tiger. Last season, he became the Japan tour’s youngest-ever order of merit winner and banked close to 2 million dollars in prize-money. Not bad for a boy who was only 17 until the middle of September.
The ride is only just beginning for Ryo Ishikawa, and already he’s making millions of dollars. It’s hard for anyone to go a day in Japan without seeing him on television or on a billboard where he’s either playing golf or endorsing brands like Panasonic or All Nippon Airways. These are brands with international standing or global ambition.
He travels with an entourage, is pursued by swarms of media and he already has a public museum in which to put all his trophies. Every week, hundreds of people pay to see them. It’s no wonder that his motto is “World, here I come.”
If the ambition and the marketing seem arrogant, the young man himself is not. “I may be famous on the course, but at home I’m just treated as one of the kids. Often I feel very fortunate, I feel happy when a lot of fans come to cheer me” Ishikawa told me ahead of recent tournament in Sapporo. “I’m not sure I’d call myself a genius, but of course I have worked hard.”
That is the very essence of Ryo Ishikawa, and also the public perception of him. He’s close to his family （he has a younger brother and sister）, humble, down-to-earth and ferociously dedicated.
Every day, he spends up to three hours working on his fitness and five more on the range. He’s very much a product of the Tiger generation.
Ishikawa, McIlroy and Fowler all play ballsy, aggressive golf and all three dress to be noticed. Bright orange or sky-blue trousers don’t look out of place on the Japanese star, who says he likes to be spotted easily and - like Tiger - he wears red on Sunday for his final round.
“I started to play golf because of Tiger Woods, he was sensational and I respect him so much. I always dreamed I would play like him and without him, I wouldn’t be here today. The generation following Woods - including myself - needs to contribute to making the golf world even more exciting for the future.”
Ishikawa’s already doing his bit. This year, on Sunday the second of May, he donned a pair of signal-red trousers and calmly wrote his name into the record books by winning the Crowns tournament in Nagoya. He beat the field by five strokes for what was his seventh career title, but no-one was counting trophies that day; he had just shot the lowest-ever score on a major tour: 58.
At the time, he said the phenomenal achievement hadn’t yet sunk in. He’s still at a loss to explain it, “It was like being in a dream. It was as if the ball and the cup had magnetic powers or it was as if I was controlling the ball by remote control.”
However he’d done it, the rest of the world was now taking notice, and there would be no such thing as a ‘normal’ life for Ryo Ishikawa. “I cannot travel on a train anymore and if I go out shopping without a disguise, like a cap, then people gather around me and cause a public disturbance.” Ishikawa is almost matter of fact about it, and he’s certainly not complaining.