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Has anyone in the Western world dared to admit to disappointment that Hideki Matsuyama was unable to intersperse his winner’s speech at Augusta National with a couple of anecdotes in English? The chances are that no-one had a problem with it, though you maybe have to take into account that this engaging young man seldom delivers such things in Japanese either.
Matsuyama is under no obligation to learn English any more than the Westerner who makes off with a big title in Japan is expected to be deft in Japanese.
There is, though, no getting away from the fact that it is appreciated when a player winning far from his homeland can deliver something at least of his speech either in the sponsors’ tongue or that of the host nation. It is good for the player, too, in that it can turn him or her into an instant hit with the locals. In which connection, there is no better example than how South Korea’s Y.E. Yang tackled his winner’s words at the HSBC Champions in 2006, his warning win before he became the first Asian player to make off with a major, the 2009 PGA Championship.
In what was the equivalent of a Litany of the Saints, he went through the names of the sponsors, each time adding a beautifully-rehearsed “thank you.”
The PGA Tour. “Thank you.”
The European Tour. “Thank you.”
The Asian Tour. “Thank you.”
HSBC. “Thank you.”
Sheshan Golf Club. “Thank you.”
I may have forgotten the next 20 or so on the list but he didn’t and, by the end, the applause was deafening.
It goes without saying that everyone can learn from everyone in the cosmopolitan golfing world in which we now live. Away from the language issue, the Japanese and the South Koreans often show us a thing or two about how to stay cool and mannerly in a crisis. Here, there was a fascinating observation from Dame Laura Davies when she won the 1987 U.S. Open from JoAnne Carner and Ayako Okamoto.
In the playoff, an understandably nervous Okamoto had four putts on the ninth green and three putts from no distance at all at the 13th. A golfer from the West would have been hard put to disguise her fury but this enviably disciplined competitor did not begin to react with irritation. Instead, she laughed at her unfortunate lot. Davies, who has been visiting Japan for years and who, incidentally, has a number of Japanese phrases up her sleeve, knew the score.
“The tone of their laughter,” Davies explained, “is such as to suggest that they are surprised that such a thing could happen to them. It’s a great way of dealing with things.”
In 2019, Hinako Shibuno, though she could speak a bit of English, set a wonderful example to many an expressionless individual by speaking in smiles when she won the AIG Women’s British Open at Woburn. The highlight, perhaps, came when she was asked to explain the fit of giggles which preceded her winning blow to the 72nd green. Would you believe that she was thinking – and saying – that she might shank it?
The other way round, and I once watched with interest how Colin Montgomerie, who was not hardly one for emitting an agreeable chuckle when something went wrong, would handle his three purely Japanese-speaking partners in a major pro-am.
No wonder European Tour hierarchy had singled him out for the task. When one of the amateurs made an almighty hash of things in a bunker at the first, the Scot led the entire party into the hazard and delivered a lesson. It was one from which all four emerged covered in sand and roaring with laughter.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Lewine Mair