Hideki Matsuyama is very much one of the best golfers in the world from outside the USA and Europe and having won the Masters in 2021, he’s had the tradition and honour of presenting the yearly dinner at Augusta.
The winners dinner is widely regarded as one of the most privileged opportunities in golf and some of the great names of the game like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and more have had the task of picking the menu and delivering a speech the year after their wins.
Of course, speaking in front of your peers is common place in a lot of high level sports but for someone like Hideki Matsuyama – who speaks limited English – the challenge is greater.
However, just like he is on the golf course, it appears Matsuyama was meticulous in his planning for his speech in 2022.
And so much so, that both Tom Watson and Gary Player were left blown away by the Japanese star.
Why Gary Player and Tom Watson were so impressed by Hideki Matsuyama at the 2022 Masters
Having won the Masters for the first time in 1961 and 1977, it’s safe to say that both Tom Watson and Gary Player have sat through their fair share of Masters dinners.
However, when it came to listening to Matsuyama in 2022, the legendary duo were left stunned with how the Japanese star delivered his effort.
“I have to say just as a corollary that after Hideki finished his speech, I could tell — I was watching him before sitting in the middle between Ben Crenshaw and Chairman Ridley, and he was sitting there with his eyes like this and his hands were moving, and I could tell he was very nervous. He made the speech. He didn’t miss a beat. He didn’t miss a word,” Watson said.
“After the speech was over, he goes, “Whew,” like that. Simultaneously everybody got up to give him a standing ovation, a standing O, because we really appreciated the effort that he put in to go through minutes in English when he had a hard time doing it.”
Backing Matsuyama up further on the speech and the language barrier, South African star Gary Player also lauded the the Japanese ace.
“For me, I remember when I was the first international player to win this great tournament, and I sat next to Ben Hogan, who I always thought had the greatest golf swing of any human being that ever lived, and I was obviously very nervous sitting amongst all these world champions.
“That’s why — I’d been to Japan almost 30 times. I wanted to try and make Hideki feel at home as much — because I can remember how I felt, and he must have felt even more awkward because he doesn’t speak English very well.
But I was absolutely in awe, as everybody was, that he stood up and he just gave this incredible speech. As Tom said, everybody stood up and just gave him a standing ovation and made him feel welcome.
If you think back, it was 1961 that I won the tournament, and the only international player — I don’t like to use the word foreign because we’re all part of this planet, and now there’s 16 international players, and what has been our dream, all three of us, and Arnold’s dream, was to make this game a truly international game, which it is today, which is really wonderful.
“When you think even in China it’s played today, even though President Xi is not a man who’s a great fan of golf, but they’re going to have a champion one of these years. It’s just so good for international relation.”
What was on Hideki Matsuyama’s Masters dinner menu?
With so many Americans having won the event over the years, the players at the dinner have experienced more than their fair share of ‘Westernised’ dishes.
However, Matsuyama very much stuck to his Japanese roots in 2022 with his menu in what, at the time, became a talking point across golf media due to its unique feel.
As shared at the time by the Masters’ official social channels, Matsuyama went all in on the Japanese feel for his menu.
Jon Rahm was another player who stuck to his Spanish roots when he won in 2023, with the LIV Golf star delivering a unique Spanish tapas style menu, much to the delight of the former winners.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
