AUGUSTA, Ga. — You walk around at the Masters and the sameness is evident. Take a peek inside the clubhouse if you need to. It’s predominantly white Americans strolling the grounds, enjoying the same American cuisine, speaking the same language, wearing the same brand of sunglasses.
There’s no surprise to it — this is Augusta, Georgia, America, after all. But on Sunday, a new visual appeared to the few thousand spectators on site and the millions watching at home: an Asian-born player winning the Masters for the first time, punching the sky with both hands, a green jacket on his back, with a smile that could have reached across the Pacific.
It’s difficult to categorize how significant Hideki Matsuyama’s Masters victory is, can be and will be. We can’t begin to quantify it. Perhaps sometime down the road. But a more subtle, qualitative takeaway from the 85th Masters has to do with a simple concept: representation. The image of a Japanese man doing exactly what he did Sunday, here in this southeastern corner of the United States, and just eight days after a Japanese woman prevailed at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
The event Matsuyama won is a golf tournament first but also so many other things: an idea, a ritual, a week’s worth of lessons, year after year. But boil the Masters down and this annual celebration is just a bunch of visuals. And they have no language barrier. The green jacket ceremony and the Butler Cabin interview. Dustin Johnson, the reigning champ, shaking Matsuyama’s hand, and Fred Ridley, Mr. Chairman, dapping up the new man in green. There are prospective visuals of Matsuyama’s title defense next year and his return every year after that, as long as he wants. When Japanese fare is provided to past champions on Tuesday, April 6, 2022, the meal will represent much more than Hideki’s winning 10-under score. Matsuyama will be photographed bringing the green jacket anywhere he wants for the next 358 days. Will it make an appearance at the Olympics this summer in Tokyo? We can only hope.
On Sunday afternoon, I asked Kevin Na, Korean-American and T12 finisher at the Masters, what representation means to him: “Everybody represents something, whether it’s your hometown, your country, or whether it’s race. You represent something.”
He’s right. Matsuyama was the only Japanese player in the field. That’s often the case.
Na knows a thing or two about that life. He was born in Seoul, South Korea, emigrating to the United States as an eight-year-old and is now one of just a handful of Korean-Americans on the PGA Tour. “I’m an American citizen but I still have a lot of respect for where I come from, for my heritage, and you know what, I’m proud to be both,” Na said. “Asian-American, Korean-American, whatever you want to call it, I’m proud to be both.”
Proud to act on it, too. When he wins tournaments, Na answers questions in English first, then in Korean. He knows people are watching. During his practice round Tuesday, Na spoke in Korean to a couple patrons on the 11th tee. “Let’s go, Kev. Go get this thing,” one of them said. Na ripped a driver, said thank you and signed a couple of gloves for them as a gift.
