Japanese media watch Ryo Ishikawa at the recent Northern Trust Open golf tournament in California.
REUTERS PHOTO

Some teed off by Japanese media swarming over Ishikawa

Seventeen-year-old professional golfer Ryo Ishikawa made his U.S. PGA Tour debut at the Northern Trust Open this month. Thirty Japanese media sent more than 100 representatives to the tour to report on Ishikawa. He failed to make the cut, though, and made an early exit from the tournament.

“I don’t think we saw him at his best. Maybe he had jet lag,” said a U.S.-based journalist. “He must have felt weird being followed by such a huge media contingent.”

Japanese media often follow Japanese athletes abroad. A Japanese sports journalist for a newspaper says, “When Ichiro joined Major League Baseball in 2001, lots of Japanese media gathered to cover him, and ignored other players. This put Ichiro in an awkward position within the team.”

Ishikawa has accepted a special invitation to play at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia in April and is also scheduled to tee off at the Transitions Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational both in Florida next month.

There some concerns over Japanese media behavior. Insiders say that everybody thought Ishikawa’s participation would be decided by the first week of January. But it wasn’t decided until Jan 22. The reason for the delay was the committee’s concerns that other foreign media would complain about the behavior of Japanese media, according to insiders.

A golf journalist says, “The majority of Japanese media go back to Japan without reporting the final result of the tournament because Japanese golfers often miss the cut. That doesn’t create a good impression of Japanese media among Western media. They say giving press passes to Japanese media is a waste.”

The Japanese media seem to be heating up off the golf course. A TV producer says some female announcers see Ishikawa as a future husband candidate. “In a magazine interview, Ishikawa’s mother said her son should have a woman who is fluent in English and older than him. After the magazine was published, young female announcers started showing their interest in golf reporting.”

Many critics say the media should back off and give Ishikawa a chance to develop his game and not cover his private life at all. (Translated by Taro Fujimoto).

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Latest 15 of 51 Total Comments Show All

memyselfI at 02:45 PM JST - 25th February

He's a AVERAGE GOLFER with nice YELLOW PANTS. He is boring, he should spice it up a bit. Throw a golf club in the air. Yell curse and scream.

I never see this guy get fustrated. He is as boring as Micheal Phelps.
Stonefish at 03:22 PM JST - 25th February

I agree with his Mum. His future wife should definately be older than him and be bilingual too. Now WTF is this "news" story about?
herefornow at 05:06 PM JST - 25th February

Anyone wanting further proof of this "Japanese only" mentality did not have to look any further than BS1's coverage of the tournamnet this weekend. Even on Monday morning, days after Mr. Yellow Pants had been eliminated, they showed a highlight package of his two days. Then, they cut off the broadcast at 8:30 AM -- as Phil Michelson was in the middle of the 18th fairway, needing a par to win. Japanese media, and Japanese viewers in general, are not true sports fans. They are Japanese teams and players fans -- period.
ForeignKiri at 05:26 PM JST - 25th February

I'm really amused Ishikawas mother makes APPROVAL for his future endeavors regarding relationships....

And on a good note perhaps it was better that he didn't make the cut, now the media can focus on other sports and sense besides the same shot of him doing the same thing and therefore, will maybe persuade them elsewhere to give the resr of the professional sports players credit and awknowledgement.
GW at 07:16 PM JST - 25th February

herefornow

you nailed it with the bit about J-folks only cheering their own, its pretty damned pathetic, but it does make the US look good at the Olympics as Jpn is more full of itself than the US, that, takes some doing, ha ha.

Man I remember when I used to watch tv back when Nomo & Ichiro first left the nest, with Nomo all you saw was his pitching, everytime you blinked if wud be a different inning & Nomo`s teams NEVER got to bat(on J-tv ha ha ha), with Ichiro, we only saw him swing.

Its pathetic as we all know, I find it embarassing myself with this crap.

As for the PGA soultion is to grant 5media passes to J-media & if anyone goes home when the J-man misses the cut then thats one media pass they dont get the next tourney, then in short time there will be no J-media & I bet Ishikawa wud be grateful
PepinGalarga at 04:01 AM JST - 26th February

it would be expected that the press not cover athletes not from their home countries. If you travel 14,000 miles to Pakistan to watch a guy from your hometown play, after he's out, doesnt make any sense to stay there, right? same thing...

Even in the Olympics the coverage on NBC was almost 100% US players. In gymnastics and swimming, i rarely saw any of the other countries' players, only in the final round. And actually, if no US players were up for medals then i would find out in the internet or newspaper, they wouldnt even show up on TV. same thing...
Pukey2 at 09:02 AM JST - 26th February

Why the comparison with Pakistani TV? I don't think the Japanese would be flattered.
GenevaMan at 12:51 PM JST - 26th February

For the first time in my life I have seen softball, during the Olympics, thanks to the hysteric japanese media focusing on the only athletes that could make a somehow not so bad performance. Softball!!!!!! WTF, who cares? I cared about Phelps, Bolt, and other of this kind...instead, the same soup about Nakajima, depressed judoka and Ueno all over. Japanese fans are fans as long as their athletes are doing good. They sometimes care for foreign athletes, in football (soccer), and their "fanhood" is changing with the wind (J-Media),japanese Madrid fans peaked in 2003, then Barca, then Manchester (during the last Club World Cup, the japanese crowd just came to see C. Ronaldo doing the twist and twirl around the ball like an asthmatic breakdancer.). But they also focused on Matsui playing for le Mans (this team has an actually High School level) and many other worthless footballers in Europe, just because they were japanese. This Ishikawa guy is another tarentless tarento; he's japanese, polite, shy,he still has acnea but his mother is already thinking about marriage: same old same old in Yamato. I also suspect that the poor performance of japanese athletes in the international arena is definitely due to the fans beeing easily satisfied with peanuts and beeing ethnocentric: Hide Nakata retired when he was 29? Bashing anyone? Nope, he's now advertising some crap. In one or two decades, Japan will probably create some sports in which only Japanese could compete: inago charming, extreme soba eating and of course the Zenkoku Baatendaa Long Island Ice Tea Sheikingu!!! That would make everyone happy.
PepinGalarga at 02:20 PM JST - 26th February

I think Ishikawa has some talent, and guts. The other day in the final hole of a tournament he hit the ball completely submerged in water in a lake, and the ball landed within a few feet, then he sank the put to win. More hyped up golfers such as Greg Norman and Lefty have folded under lesser pressure than that.
MANDUDE at 04:06 PM JST - 26th February

Anyone remember the olympics...summer and winter? I would watch events on TV but once the last remaining Japanese participant would be eliminated they would switch to another event without showing who won the Gold Medal- thats the fun of it- sure I root for my home countries and other countries I like but it is fun to see who wins and from where. This Golf thing is NO SURPRISE
Richard_the_First at 05:38 PM JST - 26th February

It's because it's all ratings related. If they continue showing the olympic event/sport without Japanese athletes, people will switch channels. It's part of the reason why they use popular boy bands to front these things as 'special supporters'.
Pukey2 at 12:20 AM JST - 27th February

It's because it's all ratings related

And that doesn't say much about the sad viewers.
sf2k at 04:52 AM JST - 27th February

@Richard the First If people really were given half a chance to get interested in the sport they wouldn't switch channels. That's the media telling you what to do, not fans of sport. But if they did that they would learn Ishikawa's real skill level. Even so, it would show what he is up against and how he deals with pressure in the sport. Denying the rest of the broadcast denies understanding and development of a true fan base.
Jim_Swanson at 10:50 AM JST - 27th February

I think some people aren't giving the local media their dues. They don't just cover Japanese competitors. They'll interview as many as the top tiered foreign players as possible to ask the golden question, "What do you think about Ryo Ishikawa?"
isthistheend at 09:38 PM JST - 2nd March

Geneva man you've got a point. But why we even bother commenting among ourselves? Nobody that lives here (ie natives) give a hoot about our opinions, so we're definitely not writing for the sake of "improving the place". Its good to have a place to release opinions, if your lucky enough not to have it be ruled "off the subject."