Rising Son

Embraced by a nation dazzled by his meteoric career, Japan's Ryo Ishikawa is a teen on a mission

By Reiko Takekawa

Photo by Scott Halleran/getty images

April 6, 2009

Of the three teenagers in this year's Masters, Ryo Ishikawa, 17, is the youngest. Because he is from Japan, a nation that takes its sports heroes seriously, he is likely the member of the threesome most burdened by expectation. Already shadowed by dozens of photographers wherever he goes, Ishikawa will garner a larger media throng next week than phenoms Danny Lee or Rory McIlroy, who have been creating quite a stir themselves.

Known as "hanikami oji" (the bashful prince), Ishikawa brings the pride of a nation with him to Augusta National GC. It is a weight under which other hopefuls from his homeland have buckled, including the godfather of Japanese golf, Masashi (Jumbo) Ozaki, who led the Japan Tour money list 12 times but finished in the top 10 just once in 19 Masters starts. A nation looks to Ishikawa to do what no Japanese man has done: win a major championship.

"A Japanese winning a major is not going to happen among the players of my generation," says Shingo Katayama, 36, who has been the money leader in Japan four of the last five years and has played his way onto the leader board at a couple major championships. He knows that for players such as himself and Shigeki Maruyama the window is rapidly closing. "We have to wait for two generations," says Katayama, "and Ryo could be the one."

Georgia was already on Ishikawa's mind when he turned pro in January 2008, less than four months past his 16th birthday. "My goal is to win the Masters," Ishikawa announced. It was less of a boast than a mission statement, bolstered by Ishikawa's victory in the Munsingwear Open KSB Cup May 7, 2007, when as a 15-year-old amateur, in his first pro event, he become the youngest golfer to win a pro tournament. Suddenly, Japan had a new superstar, someone to rival baseball's Ichiro Suzuki.

Mounds of interest: Whether it was Riviera in February for photogs or the Tokyo Dome for MLB's opening series in 2008, Ishikawa stands out. Photo: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images

Ishikawa first hit a golf ball in 1997, following Tiger Woods' first Masters victory that April, when his father took him to a driving range near their home in Saitama, a commercial center about 15 miles north of Tokyo. "When I started to play golf, Tiger was [already] a superstar, and I watched him play every Monday morning on TV [Sunday evening in the United States]," says Ishikawa. "I was amazed at his play, and I realized what a fantastic sport golf is. Since then, Tiger has been my idol. When I was playing junior golf in Japan, I used to wear red shirts all the time for the final day."

When Ishikawa was 12, he had 15 red shirts and would practice bouncing a ball on his wedge the way Woods did in the famous Nike commercial. "I even wrote down how many times I did it every day," Ishikawa says. "Once I did it more than 550 times."

Ishikawa was born Sept. 17, 1991, to a middle-class family. His father, Katsumi, 52, is an 18-handicap and still works at a bank in Saitama while serving as his son's swing coach, manager and driver. (In March, they added Mike Konishi, who once worked with Ayako Okamoto, as swing coach.) While Ryo was in junior high school, his mother would drop him off at the range after school and he would practice until his father finished work and joined him for a lesson. Woods' emergence sparked the growth of junior golf in Japan, Katsumi says, as did Ai Miyazato when she won a JLPGA event as an amateur at age 18 in 2003—Ishikawa established a goal of also winning a tour event while he was still in high school.