Top 20 Players to Watch in 2019: No. 18 Hideki Matsuyama

Our preview of the top PGA TOUR players to watch in 2019 continues with Hideki Matsuyama. Coming off a down year by his own lofty standards in 2018, can he turn it around and contend for some of golf’s biggest titles in the new year?

Hideki Matsuyama is one of today’s great golfing mysteries. He’s clearly got all the talent to take the PGA TOUR – and any other tour he chooses to play – by storm. However, up until now, the results have largely failed to live up to the hype surrounding him.

However, in my book, he’s still one of the top talents to watch in 2019, for precisely that reason. There’s a world of opportunity out there for Matsuyama if he’s ready to take it, but this year feels like a complete “make or break” type of season.

Perhaps that’s a bit farfetched, but it’s not entirely unreasonable. Let’s take a little deeper look at the situation. Matsuyama is “only” 26 years old. Why “only”, you ask? In today’s game, that is somehow caught right in the middle of the bracket of today’s elite. While a healthy golfer’s victory-capable career can easily last into the mid-40s or longer, the game’s brightest stars seem to be reaching their peak by their mid-to-late 30s. In short, it’s not that his “window” is closing anytime soon, but fields are getting far more competitive, and younger at the same time.

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Of course, when it comes to pure ability between the ropes, nobody can deny that Matsuyama’s ceiling might be higher than almost anyone else’s out there. It was just a year and a half ago – following the 2017 PGA Championship – when he was the second-ranked player on the planet. It wasn’t until June 18th of this year that he fell outside the top ten in the Official World Golf Ranking. That doesn’t exactly feel like a harbinger of doom, does it?

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Still, a quick look at his Matsuyama’s 2018 results tells a tougher story to decipher. In 21 starts, he finished inside the top ten just four times, with no victories. What’s more, two of those came in the FedEx Cup Playoffs; Matsuyama earned just two top-ten finishes during the “regular season” of 2017-18. He had seven such finishes in 2017, eight in 2016, and nine in 2015. It tied the lowest mark of his relatively young full-time PGA TOUR career, in 2014, but he also made it to the winner’s circle as a rookie.

Statistically, Matsuyama enjoyed his best putting season in 2018, ranking 78th in strokes gained putting. However, after three consecutive years inside the top-25 in strokes gained off the tee, Matsuyama fell all the way to 70th in 2018. Putting is great, but when you’re putting for pars and bogeys more often than in previous years, that’s a losing bet in the long run.

So what are we going to get from him in 2019? Matsuyama made the cut in both of his starts in Asia this past October, finishing T-18 at THE CJ CUP and T-30 at the WGC-HSBC Champions. He also finished dead last (18th of 18) at the unofficial Hero World Challenge earlier this month. That’s not what you want to see heading into a holiday break, but I think it could do some good for his mental game.

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Matsuyama has yet to miss out on the TOUR Championship in his five full-time PGA TOUR seasons. I’m not ready to count him out just yet, but he’ll need to find a groove in the early part of the season, especially if he wants to contend in any of the majors this year.

The form might not be there right now, but the talent is just too much to ignore, and that’s why I’ll be watching Hideki Matsuyama very closely in 2019.

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