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Last Monday, rumors circulated among Tokyo bankers that CVC’s $ 20 billion private capital purchase proposal at Toshiba it had been quietly cooked on a golf course.
If it were true, and while it is plausible, there is no evidence, however, it would have placed second among the most fascinating golf stories of the week in Japan. Nothing, of course, could surpass Hideki Matsuyama’s triumph becoming the first Japanese player to win The Masters.
Several moments stood out amid the great puff of joy uncovered by the 29-year-old’s victory and retirement that, finally, the best of Japan was truly the best of the world. There was the desperation of the interviewers as they tried to reward the words of delight of one of the most laconic athletes in the world. There was the heavily tweeted images of Matsuyama’s caddy returning the flagpole to hole 18 and bending over the course.
But the most revealing were the sobs of Japanese golf commentators. Veteran broadcasters were so drowned in ecstasy that they soiled the word sumimasen, or sorry, as the final scenes of the game were played.
Those tears, with all their spontaneity, authenticity, and relief, seemed to belong to the entire sport of golf in Japan, a quest in which the nation has diverted the kind of money, ingenuity, time, and perseverance normally reserved for wars. or weddings. The overwhelming feeling was that while Matsuyama’s triumph was his, it was also something deserved and defeated for Japan.
Think of the dedication that the third largest economy in the world has had to achieve this result. After a slow start in the early twentieth century, addiction to the Gulf of Japan soared in parallel with its economic rise from the 1970s, reaching a peak of participation and spending just after the bubble burst in 1991. The government recorded the notional number of Japanese golfers that year. (many will not have played a proper round) at about 18 m.
Participation is well below the levels of that time, but private equity funds I still see a great opportunity in the growing ranks of retired golfers. A recent report calculated that whose number played at least one round in 2019 it was still almost 6 million, or 5.5% of the adult population.
Significantly, in an economy where income from many leisure activities is declining, the gulf has remained constant for almost a decade, with players i sale of equipment increased in 2019 and it was reported that 170,000 new players started playing the sport in 2020, despite the pandemic. Although about 200 courses have closed in the last decade, Japan still has 3,100 in 2,227 facilities, placing it second in the world after the U.S.
What these statistics fail to capture is the formidable willpower behind Japan’s love affair with golf. There is the very existence of these 3,000 courses in a country that is about three-quarters of a mountain and the rest, either intensively cultivated or urbanized. Construction was only part of the challenge.
Byzantine land laws required potential operators to navigate dark legal and pressure mazes to convince small and often fabulous landowners to lease the plots needed to build the courses. So impressive is its impeccable maintenance, given the way the natural world, with belligerent fertility, seems to be doing all it can in Japan to ruin a virgin fairway.
For those who love sports, there is also an act of will when it comes to pursuing a hobby that is still expensive and where courses are usually at a considerable distance from where most people live, which it requires a brutal start to the morning to make the departure time normal.
Finally, there is the extensive will that many Japanese, both players and their families, require to pretend to be okay with a time thief who feels deliberately designed to disguise work as leisure. For those forced to spend weekends with clients and bosses, it’s a burden. To those complicit in these obligations, golf can seem like a lot of abuse of power.
The cheerful tears of the commentators were no doubt shared with many other Japanese who have waited for a Matsuyama to appear and put on this championship-winning final putt. Having paid such great fees, it was time for Japan to receive from the Gulf what it owed.
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