He’s 15 and, like schoolboys the world over, styles his hair like David Beckham. Until the weekend few people had heard of Ryo Ishikawa. Now he carries the sporting hopes of an entire nation upon his young shoulders, as well as the prosperity of the ailing Japanese golf industry.

Young Ishikawa interrupted revision for his school mid-term examinations to take part in the Munsingwear Open KSB golf tournament, with scant hopes of success in his first ever professional event. But against the odds he was victorious, becoming the youngest winner of a senior professional golf tournament in Japan, a record previously held be Seve Ballesteros. Ishikawa won the event by a single stroke, claiming the trophy, silver plate and tournament winner’s red blazer, although because of his amateur status he had to forfeit the 20 million yen (£83,500) prize money.

“I still can’t believe I won in a professional tour,” said Ishikawa, who began to play golf at the age of 6 with his father, and had to overcome asthma as a youth.

His hero is Tiger Woods, the American golfer who took the sport by storm at a young age, and yesterday he enjoyed the acclaim of a nation quick to predict that one day he will surpass his American role model.

The time is ripe for a new golfing hero to breathe life back into the sport in Japan. During the boom years of the 1980s, golf was the prestige sport, and golf club memberships were traded on an exchange like shares. But by the early years of the new millennium, hundreds of the 2,400 golf courses in Japan had gone bankrupt, the result of overborrowing and the slashing of company perks. The Japan Golf Association says that there were 2.49 million golfers in their twenties in 1990, a number that is expected to fall to fewer than one million by 2010. The value of the golf industry in Japan has slumped by 30 per cent in the past decade, although it is still worth a formidable £8 billion a year.

Ishikawa’s fairytale rise has earned him the nickname “Cinderella boy”, and his life story has thrust golf on to the front pages. “An unknown boy with 300-yard drives and handsome smiles achieved a prodigious feat that shakes the world of golf,” proclaimed the Nikkan Sports newspaper. The Sankei Sports described him as a “genius who goes far beyond Woods”.

He shot 72 and 69 in the first two rounds at the Tojigaoka Marine Hills Golf Club in Okayama prefecture, western Japan, putting him at joint 23rd place. After a 69 in the third round, he surged up the leader board on Sunday with seven birdies against a lone bogey to shoot a six under par 66 in the final round in front of an 10,800-strong crowd.

Ishikawa commutes for two hours to school in Tokyo, where he practises for four hours a day. The Japanese press recorded yesterday that he always carries a tin of hair wax with him on tour in order to maintain his “soft Mohican” hairstyle, modelled on that formerly sported by Beckham.

Japan has a fondness for juvenile athletes, from Ai Fukuhara, the 18-year-old table tennis player, who turned professional at the age of 10, to Mao Asada, the 16-year-old figure skating champion, who won a silver medal in this year’s world championship.

Rough guide

— 11 million people regularly play golf in Japan

— The country has 2,340 golf courses for a population of 127.5 million

— The most expensive is the Taiheiyo Club Gotemba Course, where members pay 41,000 yen (£171) a round

— An average of 40 new courses open each year

— Japanese golfers buy all other club members expensive gifts to celebrate scoring a hole in one, so many insure themselves against doing so

— The seventh hole of the Sano Course at the Satsuki Golf Club is a 909-yard par seven and the longest golf hole in the world

Sources: golf-in-japan.com; scigolf.com; Times archive

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