When the 35th Hawaii Pearl Open kicks off Friday it will be as full of the unexpected as ever. That has come to be expected.
One of the rare constants will be missing. Tsugio Ogata, Pearl Country Club’s president — reverently known as "Shacho" — died in May. He handed the check to 2012 champ Jun Won Park a year ago, as he had 33 previous years, never letting anyone here know he was suffering from colon cancer.
He won’t be there this weekend to see Park try to defend, or David Ishii, Kevin Hayashi, Gregory Meyer, Kiyoshi Murota and Jesse Mueller try to win again.
He won’t be able to watch Ayaka Kaneko, Eimi Koga, Nicole Sakamoto, Yuka Kuriyama and Reika Usui see how their games stack up against 160 male pros and amateurs from Hawaii, Japan and all over.
Ogata was instrumental in encouraging Michelle Wie to become the first female to play Pearl in 2002. The 12-year-old missed the cut that year, when the 47-year-old Murota won by five. At the 25th HPO a year later, Golf Channel followed Wie’s progress at Pearl after she made the cut. In 2004, Jonathan Ota needed a final-round 66 to beat Wie for low amateur honors. A year later, Japan LPGA Rookie of the Year Sakura Yokomine tied for 17th.
Those only-at-Pearl stories go on and on. Last year it was Park, a Korean pro, winning a frantic finish in a playoff over 15-year-old John Oda, who would capture the state high school championship three months later. Tuesday, Moanalua freshman Kiyoshi Hara fired 67 to win the qualifier.
The tournament has embraced golfers from Japan, Hawaii and all over the map. It is hard to imagine another event as inclusive, opening its tees to girls and women, teens, pre-teens and golf legends such as Murota and Pearl director of golf Ishii, who were born the same day in 1955.
Ogata and his boss, the late Honda Motors founder Soichiro Honda, created the Hawaii Pearl Open in 1979 "to give Hawaii’s top golf players the opportunity to compete with an international field of professionals." It is part of the club’s mission statement, along with "to serve the local community by providing residents with a golf course of equal caliber to any private course on Oahu" and "to support Hawaii’s young and aspiring golf pros by giving them the opportunity to expand into the international golf arena."
Ogata was officially president of Honda Kaihatsu Kogyo, which owned Pearl. He executed the purchase of the course in 1975 and implemented improvements to give the public course a country club environment and still keep it affordable for local golfers.
The Hawaii Pearl Open was started to promote international goodwill and also give Japanese pros a place to work on their game in the winter — an idea that has also taken hold in South Korea recently. Its $80,000-plus purse is the largest for a local tournament and the winner also gets a trip to Japan. Its impact there and Pearl’s support were crucial in giving Ishii and Meyer opportunities to golf on the Japan tour.
Ogata personally helped Ishii early on, getting him to tournaments and helping him feel comfortable as the Kauai native worked on his golf and Japanese.
"The first set of tournaments I played in Japan I missed most of the cuts, by one or two strokes," recalled Ishii in a video made in Ogata’s memory and filled with poignant memories from his staff. "I was getting discouraged. Finally I made one cut and Mr. Ogata and a friend had a party for me that night. He was so happy I made the cut. In the third round I shot 83. After that, no parties for me."
Today’s pro-am will again raise funds for "Rainbow for Japan Kids," a project that brings students who suffered in the earthquake and tsunami to Hawaii for physical and emotional recovery. That natural disaster had another, much more subtle effect on Pearl.
Restaurant manager Mike Tao recalled that Ogata came up to him after and told him to "be aware of the new clientele we might be getting" with fewer people able to come in from Japan.
"He mentioned to me that to prepare, I should think of more Korean or Chinese dishes to offer," Tao said, grinning. "So we serve kimchee in the restaurant now."
Ogata was a loyal, observant and compassionate businessman who began every conversation with a smile. Those traits have left his employees at Pearl sad that they never got to say goodbye. This week, they will do that in the only way they know how, by dedicating the 35th HPO to the memory of "Shacho."
"He was really motivational, so I tried hard for him," said course superintendent Howard Hamada. "All of his dreams of making a place people can enjoy came true."
