AUGUSTA, Ga. — The shepherd was dressed in a white Masters cap, a collared shirt and dark blue slacks, and he looked like your average silver-haired bank executive in your average golf crowd. But Bob Turner was not some well-connected fan who scored a ticket to an Augusta National Sunday downsized by the pandemic.
No, Turner was the most obvious American reason why Japan has a men’s major champion for the first time.
He is far more than Hideki Matsuyama’s interpreter. Turner is to the golfer what a “body man” is to a United States president — he handles all the logistics. Turner is the one who helped make the fiercely private Matsuyama comfortable enough in a foreign land that he could win Jack Nicklaus’ tournament in Ohio at age 22, become a five-time PGA Tour winner and make history in his native country by winning the game’s most prestigious tournament a world away in the Georgia pines.
More than anything, Turner is Hideki Matsuyama’s good friend. Or, as Matsuyama put it, “Bob is a trustworthy friend.” Turner wasn’t just at the champion’s side during his Butler Cabin and media center interviews, or at the green jacket ceremony, where, like a good assist man, he quietly reminded Matsuyama to thank the club membership. Turner was at his side the entire week, just like he has been for years, trying to steer his man to a magical moment that was nearly 50 years in the making.
The journey started in 1972, when Turner, a Brigham Young student and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, left for a two-year mission in Japan. He met the woman who would be his wife, returned to the U.S., and then, after his wife, Hiroko, grew homesick, headed back to Japan to finish his studies and play golf at Tokyo’s Waseda University. He was the only American playing for Waseda, or for any team on the school’s elite level, and one day a tournament director asked him, “What the heck are you doing over here?”
The man offered Turner a job in the golf industry, and soon enough he was helping Seve Ballesteros, Sam Snead and Johnny Miller adjust on trips to Japan. Back in the States years later, Turner’s son Allen would work as an interpreter for Mariners stars Kazuhiro Sasaki and Ichiro Suzuki. Sasaki had attended Matsuyama’s university, Tohoku Fukushi, which would compete in tournaments in Seattle. The school’s golf coach would ultimately ask Turner, who was working for his father, to help Matsuyama get acclimated to Augusta after a 19-year-old Hideki qualified for the Masters in 2011.
“And here we are,” Bob Turner said near the first fairway Sunday, 10 years after his player finished as low amateur at Augusta National and hours before he would end up in a green jacket.
As he walked the course with two reporters, Turner compared Matsuyama’s passion to Ballesteros’. “Seve used to tell me, ‘Bob, I hole out on Sunday and pack up and just couldn’t wait to get to the next tournament.’ ”
Turner told a story about Matsuyama’s first U.S. Open, at Merion, in 2013, when he shot a closing 67 to tie for 10th. It had been a long, wet, draining week, and Turner figured it was a wrap after his player cleaned out his locker and headed to a parking lot near the practice range.
Matsuyama told his interpreter he wanted to hit some balls.
“Aren’t you tired?” Turner asked.
“Bob,” Matsuyama responded, “look at this beautiful practice range. We can’t let it go to waste.”
Matsuyama pounded away for an hour. “I knew then that this is somebody special,” Turner said.
He had to be special Sunday to overcome his second shot at the 15th, where he knocked his approach over the green and into the water and watched his four-shot lead over Xander Shauffele shrink to two.
Schauffele was the one who folded on the next hole, sending his tee shot into the water en route to a triple bogey. Matsuyama missed his par putt, but it didn’t matter. Though he admitted to being nervous all day, Matsuyama made par on 17 to keep his two-stroke advantage on Will Zalatoris, and tapped in for bogey on 18 to join Tsubasa Kajitani, Augusta National Women’s Amateur winner, as Japanese champs on these grounds.
Turner’s job was just starting then. The 68-year-old American who regards his old Waseda teammates as brothers decades later had to steer Japan’s newest hero through a maze of media obligations.
“I’m not a translator,” Turner explained. “I don’t translate word for word. I’m an interpreter. I hear what he’s saying, and then I try to say it as an American, or someone who speaks English, would say the same feeling.”
Turner takes pride in taking his player’s temperature and matching his cadence. “I guess I’m processing it from here,” he said, pointing to his heart, “rather than from here,” he added, pointing to his head.
But before the post-tournament proceedings started, before the interpreter threw on a jacket and tie and guided his player from one interview to the next, Hideki Matsuyama stopped to give Bob Turner a hug behind the 18th green.
No interpretation was required.
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