Hideki Matsuyama will try to defend his 2021 victory.

Hideki Matsuyama is again in Augusta, Ga., taking a second shot at receiving the ceremonial inexperienced jacket.

Matsuyama, 30, and a former teenage prodigy, set data final yr when he gained the Masters by one stroke, turning into the event’s first Asian-born champion and the primary Japanese man to win a significant golf championship.

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Notably lacking from final yr’s event was Tiger Woods, who didn’t compete due to a severe leg damage he sustained in a automobile crash that February. His absence opened the door for a brand new period of youthful golfers to showcase their expertise on the game’s greatest stage.

Nonetheless, Matsuyama was positioned as something however the potential champion.

Coming into the 2021 Masters, Matsuyama was ranked twenty fifth on the planet and had not gained a event since 2017. But a glowing 65 within the third spherical gave Matsuyama a head begin for his victory lap: He entered the final spherical with a four-stroke benefit and shot a one-over-par 73 to complete the event at 10 underneath par, only one stroke forward of Will Zalatoris, the 25-year-old Masters rookie from San Francisco. Zalatoris’s second-place end helped raised his profile throughout the {golfing} neighborhood.

Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth, additionally from the USA, tied for third at seven underneath par.

Matsuyama, who realized golf from his father, had lengthy been lionized in Japan and seen because the nation’s greatest probability to interrupt by means of at golf’s greatest event. Two Japanese girls, Hisako Higuchi and Hinako Shibuno, have been main champions.

Matsuyama isn’t a favourite heading into this yr’s event — Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas have the shortest odds at roughly 12-1 — however the video games are solely simply starting.