Somewhere between bringing a Masters green jacket home to Japan and trying to give the host nation an Olympic gold medal in golf, Hideki Matsuyama began to wonder if he would even get the chance to play.
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A month before Thursday's opening round, Matsuyama tested positive for the coronavirus.
He went 10 days without hitting a shot during his self-isolation. More troublesome were the subsequent tests that kept coming back positive, even though he was asymptomatic.
That led him to withdraw from the British Open, missing a major for the first time in eight years.
"I wasn't really sure if I'd be able to make it to the stage here," Matsuyama said on Tuesday. "So finally, I'm here. And I'm very happy to be able to be here."
The attention is as great as ever.
Already considered Japan's greatest player since the days of Jumbo Ozaki, the 29-year-old Matsuyama delivered a prize as good as gold in April when he won he the Masters, making him the first Japanese man to win a major.
The timing couldn't have been more appropriate with the pandemic-delayed Olympics coming to his home country.
The spotlight is as bright as ever but in some respects, the Masters might have eased some of that burden.
Matsuyama tried to get in front of it last month at the US Open when he said the four majors remain the biggest prizes in golf, and he has arguably the biggest of the year.
He hasn't finished a tournament since the US Open on June 20 because of the COVID-19 diagnosis, and he wasn't in the best of form before that. In the four times he played since winning the Masters, he hasn't finished in the top 20.
"Since my Masters win, I haven't had the best results so far this summer, so I'm a little bit nervous," Matsuyama said. "But I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's going to be really fun, and I'm going to try to do my best to play well."
He is coming back to a good spot.
Kasumigaseki Country Club, the tree-lined course about a 90-minute drive northwest of downtown Tokyo, is in mint conditions without any traffic in nearly three months. And while it's new to most of the 60-man field, it holds nothing but good memories for Matsuyama.
It was 11 years ago when Matsuyama won the Asia-Pacific Amateur at Kasumigaseki, which earned him a spot in the Masters.
That was just a start. Matsuyama won his first Japan Golf Tour event while still in college, and when he turned pro in 2013, he won four times to capture the Japan money title.
"So in a way, Kasumigaseki has been a place and catalyst for me to progress and grow," he said. "So hopefully, I could do the same this week and move on to another level."
The 60-man Olympic field is stronger than it was for Rio de Janeiro in 2016, when golf returned after a 112-year absence and the top players stayed away, most citing the Zika virus.
Australian Associated Press
