AUGUSTA, Ga. The shepherd was dressed in a white Masters cap, a short-sleeved shirt with a collar and dark blue shorts, and he looked like your average 68-year-old bank manager in your average golf gallery. But Bob Turner was not some well-connected fan, who won a ticket to an Augusta National on Sunday due to the pandemic.
No, Turner was the most obvious American reason why Japan now has a grand champion for men for the first time.
He is much more than the interpreter of Hideki Matsuyama. Turner is his logistics man, transport man and tournament entry man. He is for the golfer who is a ‘body man’ for an American president. Turner is the one who helped make Matsuyama comfortable enough in a foreign country to win the 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus’ tournament in Ohio, become a five-time PGA Tour player and make history in his homeland by wins the game’s most prestigious tournament a world away in the Georgia Pines.
More than anything, Turner is Hideki Matsuyama’s good friend. He was not only on the champion’s side during his interview in Butler Cabin, or in the main media center. Turner was by his side all week, up and down the track, just like he had been for years, trying to steer his husband to a magical moment that was almost 50 years in the making.
The journey began in 1972, when Turner, a student of Brigham Young and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, left for a two-year mission in Japan. He meets the woman who would be his wife, returns to the US, and after his wife, Hiroko, gets homesick, he returns to Japan to complete his studies and play golf at Waseda University in Tokyo, which one of the top ten golf teams. He was the only American to play collegiate golf in Japan, and one day a tournament director asked him, “What are you doing here?”
The man offered Turner a job in the golf industry and soon enough he helped Seve Ballesteros, Sam Snead and Johnny Miller when they arrived in Japan. Back in the United States years later, Turner’s son Allen would work as an interpreter for Seattle Mariners stars Kazuhiro Sasaki and Ichiro Suzuki. Sasaki attended Matsuyama University, Tohoku Fukushi, who would participate in tournaments in Seattle. The school’s golf coach would eventually ask Turner, who worked for his father, to help Matsuyama adapt to Augusta after a 19-year-old Hideki qualified for the Masters in 2011 when he finished as a low amateur.
“And here we are,” Bob Turner said Sunday on the first highway, hours before his friend would end up in a green jacket.
Turner looked a bit stressed after Matsuyama no. 1 wrong and turned his four-stroke lead over Xander Schauffele into a three-stroke lead. Just not too stressed. While taking the course and chatting with two reporters, Turner compares Matsuyama’s passion to Ballesteros. “Seve always said to me, ‘Bob, I’m holding my Sunday ass and packing and just could not wait to get to the next tournament. ‘”
Turner told a story about Matsuyama’s first US Open, in Merion, in 2013, when he shot a final round 67 to be tied for 10th place. It’s been a long, wet and draining week at Merion, with serious logistical challenges, and Turner felt it was a turnaround after his player cleared his closet and headed to a parking lot near the practice track.
Matsuyama told his interpreter he wanted to hit some balls.
“Aren’t you tired?” Ask Turner.
“Bob,” Matsuyama replied, “look at this beautiful exercise series. We can not let it go to waste. ”
Matsuyama bounces away for an hour. “I knew then that it was someone special,” Turner said.
He had to be special on Sunday to overcome his second shot on the 15th hole, where he had a four-stroke lead. Matsuyama hit his approach across the green and into the water and barely scrambled to make bogey while Schauffele made birdie to reduce the lead to two.
Schauffele was the one who folded on the next hole as he put his shot into the water on his way to a fatal threesome. Matsuyama missed his par hole, but in the end it did not matter. He took a lead at 17 to retain his two-stroke advantage over Will Zalatoris, and then at 18 for Bogey, to join Tsubasa Kajitani, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur winner, as Japanese champion in this field.
Turner’s work then just began. The 68-year-old American who made lifelong friends with his Waseda teammates and still considers them brothers who had to send his friend through a maze of media commitments decades later.
“I’m not a translator,” Turner explained. “I could translate word for word. I’m an interpreter. I hear what he’s saying, and then I try to say it like an American, or someone who speaks English, would say the same feeling. ‘
Turner is proud to take the temperature of his player and adjust his cadence. “I suppose I’m processing it from here,” he says, pointing to his heart, “rather than from here,” he adds, pointing to his head.
But before the post-tournament proceedings began, Hideki Matsuyama gave Bob Turner a warm hug behind the 18th green. No interpretation was required.