For Ryo Ishikawa, It's Go Time

Let’s first be clear on one thing: Ryo Ishikawa is only 20 years old.

Most 20 year olds are spending their days eating pizza and playing video games in dorm rooms, but not Ishikawa.

Ishikawa has been a professional golfer since the age of 16, and has already compiled 10 professional wins, all of which have come on the Asian Tour.

That being said, Ishikawa’s career began to slightly sputter last year, and he willview 2012 not just as a comeback year, but as the year he really breaks out on the world stage. 

In fairness to Ishikawa, other aspects of life took center stage last year after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated his home country of Japan. So his struggles on the course are understandable considering the struggles that millions of his compatriots were forced to endure last year.

2011 aside, Ishikawa has dominated the Japanese Tour since the age of 17, but his game has not travelled well and he has struggled on golf’s biggest stages.

In 11 major championship appearances, Ishikawa has missed the cut six times and his best finish was a T-20 at last year’s Masters.

Ishikawa had a strong showing at the 2011 WGC Bridgestone Invitational, where he tied for fourth, but outside of that, his best WGC finish was a T-17 at the 2009 HSBC Champions event.

In fact, Ishikawa has made the cut in just 54% of PGA Tour events he’s entered, and has just three top-10 finishes in 31 PGA Tour events.

Ishikawa’s inability to perform overseas is actually following a trend similar to other great Japanese golfers.

Masahi “Jumbo” Ozaki won 94 Japanese Tour events and was recently inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. However, Ozaki never won a single PGA or European Tour event and had just three top-10s in 49 major championship appearances.

Isao Aoki won 51 times on the Japanese Tour, but managed just one win on the PGA Tour and one win on the European Tour during his career. With five top-10s in 41 major championship appearances, Aoki fared only slightly better than Ozaki in the majors.

Perhaps it’s the cultural differences, different style of golf courses, different weather conditions, language barriers, or all of the above, but Japanese golfers have never felt comfortable taking their games overseas, and Ishikawa has been no different to this point in his career.

Ishikawa is on hand for this week’s Transition Championship—where he missed the cut in 2011—and will attend the Arnold Palmer Invitational next week before making his way north to Augusta where the Green Coats have given him a special exemption to attend the 2012 Masters.

Golf has become a worldwide game, and the best players in the world perform consistently well whether they are in America, Europe, Asia, South America or Australia.

And, although he’s still just 20 years old, if Ishikawa wants to really enter that conversation of top young prodigies in the game, he will need to, as LeBron James might say, take his talents to every corner of the world and start winning golf tournaments outside the borders of Japan.

Last week’s second place finish at the Puerto Rico Open was certainly a step in the right direction for Ishikawa, but he is now embarking on a stretch of three tournaments in four weeks where he can really begin to make his mark on the world stage.   

For Ishikawa, it’s go time.

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