Portrush, Northern Ireland: The winner of last year’s Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC) may have been conspicuous by his absence. But while China’s Ding Wenyi, triumphant in Japan last October, was watching events in Northern Ireland unfold from afar, two former AAC winners made their mark at the 153rd Open Championship.
Ding forfeited his chance to play in this year’s Masters Tournament and The Open by opting to turn professional in the wake of his triumph in Gotemba nine months ago.
Hideki Matsuyama and Takumi Kanaya, meanwhile, enjoyed impressive outings in the final men’s Major of 2025.
With a closing 66, Matsuyama, winner of the AAC in 2010 and 2011, soared 18 rungs on the leaderboard, finishing in a share of 16th place on seven-under 277 – 10 strokes behind world number one Scottie Scheffler, the runaway winner.
Matsuyama's only previous top-20 Open finishes came on his debut at Muirfield in 2013 where he placed equal sixth, Royal Liverpool in 2023 (tied 13th), Royal Birkdale in 2017 (tied 14th) and St Andrews in 2015 (tied 18th).
Furthermore, his five-under 66 was just his ninth sub-70 score from 38 competed rounds at The Open.
It also matched his best-ever round at The Open, equalling his returns in round two at St Andrews in 2015 and round three at Birkdale in 2017.
Out in 33, Matsuyama stormed up the leaderboard with further gains at 10, 11, 12 and 15, the only blemishes coming at 13 and 16, the two short holes on the back nine.
For Kanaya, the 2018 AAC winner, there was a deep sense of satisfaction as he succeeded in completing all four rounds at The Open for the first time in what was his fifth appearance.
Having missed the half-way cut on all four previous occasions he’d competed at The Open (2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023), the 27-year-old was determined to make it fifth time lucky this time around.
With opening rounds of 71 and 72 the reigning Japan Golf Tour money list champion survived on the cut-off mark before posting a third-round 69 and a closing 70, leaving him in joint 40th on two-under 282.
A third ex-AAC participant who made the cut was Riki Kawamoto. He tied for 16th in Dubai in 2021, the year his fellow-Japanese Keita Nakajima beat Hong Kong’s Taichi Kho in a play-off.
One year after making his major debut at the US Open, Kawamoto secured a first appearance in The Open with a tie for second place at the Mizuno Open, part of the Open Qualifying Series.
At Portrush, Kawamoto was heading for a bogey-free final round until blotting his scorecard with a five at the par-four 17th. But he finished on a bright note, holing from inside seven feet for a closing birdie and a round of three-under 68 to go with earlier scores of 70, 72 and 78. He ended joint 63rd on four-over 288.
Kawamoto had spent the first two rounds in the company of two other AAC alumni in Thai Sadom Kaewkanjana and China’s Sampson Zheng. Sadom made four AAC appearances between 2015 and 2018 while Zheng was runner-up in 2023, losing out to Australian Jasper Stubbs in a play-off that also included Ding.
Sadom and Zheng, who represented the Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation in the Bonallack Trophy in 2018 and 2023 respectively, both bowed out after 36 holes at Portrush.
