The Mynavi ABC Championship 2016 of Japan PGA tour was held from October 27 to 30, at the ABC Golf Club in Hyogo. The top 5 players of the prize money ranking didn’t take part in the tournament, Hideto Tanihara, Young-Han Song and Kyung-Tae Kim. They took part in the WGC-HSBC Champions of US PGA tour tournament with Hideki Matsuyama. So there was a good opportunity for the other players. In the top 5 players of the prize money ranking, Yuta Ikeda and Daisuke Kataoka took part in this tournament.

In the first round, Sung-Jae Im shot a 66 so he took the first place. Shingo Katayama and Byung-Min Cho shot a 67. They took the second place and they was 1 stroke behind Im. Kataoka shot a 71 so he took the 34th place. Ikeda shot a 72 so he took the 47th place.

In the second round, Cho shot a 67 again, so his total score was 10 under and he took the first place. He won the Kansai Open Golf Championship in this year, this is the first time victory for him in Japan PGA Tour. Shingo Katayama shot a 68, he took the second place and he was 1 stroke behind Cho. Kataoka shot a 68 so he went up to the 7th place. Ikeda also shot a 68, he went up to the 11th place.

However, Cho shot a 76 and dropped to the 5th place in the third round. Shingo Katayama played 73 but he kept the second place. Katayama’s total score was 8 under and he was 2 stroke behind 1st place. In this round, Shintaro Kobayashi took the first place. he shot a 69 and his total score was 10 under. Kobayashi didn’t win in the Japan PGA Tour tournament, but he won the Japan Amateur Championship in 2007. Also it is unique his sponsor, the restaurant of grilling meat on a stickroast chicken（Japanese called yakitori-ya）is his sponsor. Ikeda and Kataoka took the 11th place and they were 6 strokes bihind Kobayashi. So they dropped out of the championship.

In the final round, Shingo Katayama shot a 68 and his total score was 12 under. So Katayama won the ABC Championship 2016. He won the fourth victory of this tournament. And It was a total 30 win for him in the Japan Golf tour and he is the 6th players next to Masashi “jumbo” Ozaki, Isao Aoki, Tsuneyuki Nakajima, Naomichi Ozaki and Masahiro Kuramoto. Kobayashi shot a 71 and he was 1 stroke behind Katayama. Komei Oda took the third place and he was 3 strokes behind Katayama.

Shingo Katayama ‘s biography is that he’s the age of 43 and he was born at Ibaraki. He began playing golf from 5 years old and became a professional golfer in 1995. In 1998, he won the first time in the Japan Golf Tour. After that, he won the victory many times so he became the earned prize money king for 5 times. In US PGA tour, he took the 4th place in the Masters tournament 2009 and the PGA Championship 2001. In this time, he had to play wearing a cowboy hat so he was called “Cowboy Shingo” . Then he was selected to the members of the national men’s Olympic Golf team and played in the 2016 Rio Olympic games. His total prize monay has more than 20 billion yen.

There was a reason that Shingo Katayama wanted to win this tournament, because his new restaurant is open after this tournament. It’s a Japanese restaurant of providing the Ozaki beef and tuna at Ginza, Tokyo. So it became his encouragement. In the same day, Hideki Matsuyama won the WGC-HSBC Champions. It was a first time victory of  the World Golf Championships for Japanese. But Katayama will also be playing as a top player of Japan with Matsuyama.

This youtube’s video is Katayama’s swing of Rio Olympic. He took the 54th place in this tournament.