Hirotaro Naito’s First Tour Title: A Record at Wattsu, a Career Kept Going

Hirotaro Naito did not simply end a long wait at the ANA Open. He changed the tournament’s scoring record. On September 20, the 44-year-old closed with a 66 at Sapporo Golf Club’s Wattsu Course to finish at 25 under par, five strokes clear of Taihei Sato. His first victory on Japan’s regular men’s tour arrived in his 21st professional year—and with a total of 263 that gave the week a place in the event’s history.^[1][2]

The distinction matters: this was not his first professional win. Naito had already won three times on the developmental circuit. What had remained beyond him was a regular-tour title, through years in which promising results and the struggle to maintain playing opportunities repeatedly overlapped.^[3]

How he built the winning margin

The official leaderboard records rounds of 67, 63, 67 and 66. Sato finished on 268, with Ryuichi Oiwa and Jinichiro Kozuma tied for third on 269. Naito’s lead entering Sunday was three strokes: his opening three rounds totalled 197, against Sato’s 200.^[1]

The Japan Golf Tour Organization’s final-round report describes a round of eight birdies and two bogeys, including three successive birdies from the 15th through the 17th. Those late gains turned a position that still needed defending into a decisive victory. A five-stroke final margin can conceal the work required to create it.^[2]

Friday’s 63 was a personal best, according to JGTO’s second-round account. It also placed him alone in the lead. On Saturday he followed it with a bogey-free 67, preserving the opportunity he had created instead of giving it back. Sunday’s title was therefore built across several different demands: attack, consolidation and finally a finish under the pressure of a first regular-tour win.^[6][4]

A career that had already contained victories

Naito, whose Japanese name is 内藤寛太郎, was born in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, on May 20, 1982. His official profile records that he began golf at 14 and passed the professional test in 2006. JGTO’s Saturday report traces his route through the golf club at Nihon University Tohoku High School and Tohoku Fukushi University, then an apprenticeship at a golf course and work at a golf shop in his home city.^[3][4]

His developmental-tour victories came in 2008, 2013 and 2024. Those results make the phrase “first win” inadequate on its own: he had demonstrated that he could win professional tournaments, but doing so on the principal circuit remained another challenge.^[3]

He secured his first money-list exemption in the combined 2020–21 season, lost it in 2022 and finished 71st on the regular tour’s money list in 2025. The word often used in Japanese coverage, seed, refers to qualifying status that helps secure tournament access. Maintaining that access is a different task from producing one excellent week.^[3]

His official date of turning professional is December 21, 2006. Accordingly, the Japanese description pro 21-nenme means his 21st professional year, counting 2006 as the first. It should not be expanded into a claim that 21 full years had elapsed.^[3]

A familiar course, an unsettled relationship

Wattsu had previously offered encouragement without becoming a reliably comfortable stop. Naito finished fourth in the 2023 ANA Open. Yet JGTO’s opening-day account noted six missed cuts in his eight previous appearances. His history at the event contained both a reason to believe and substantial evidence of how difficult the course could be for him.^[5]

That same report identified a recent adjustment: a new putter introduced at August’s Sansan KBC Augusta, where he finished tied seventh. Naito described improved putting as giving him more room to remain positive when other parts of his game were imperfect. That is his assessment, not evidence that one equipment change independently caused the ANA victory.^[5]

It is nevertheless a useful detail in a story easily reduced to endurance. Persistence did not mean repeating an unchanged method indefinitely. A veteran was still trying equipment, assessing what worked and carrying a recent improvement into another competitive week.

The people who kept a career possible

JGTO’s post-victory reporting describes his father’s relief and support from Lopia dating to 2021. In translation, Naito told the organisation: “I’m glad I kept going without giving up.” He also intended to give his parents the pair of ANA first-class return tickets awarded as a supplementary prize.^[7]

Those details offer a quieter measure of the result than the leaderboard. A trophy belongs to the player who earns it; the uncertainty preceding it often reaches the people around him. Family concern and sponsorship are part of the conditions in which a professional career can continue, even when they cannot determine its outcome.

Nor does this victory establish that persistence guarantees success. The tour contains competitors who work hard without receiving the same reward. Naito’s achievement is better understood as a specific combination of sustained effort, continuing support, opportunities to compete and the execution that made this particular week different.

What the win means in Fukushima

JGTO identifies Naito as the first Fukushima-born winner on Japan’s regular men’s tour. Its separate hometown feature describes his involvement in organising a junior golf event in Koriyama before this breakthrough. The connection to younger players was already being built; it was not a role invented after he lifted a trophy.^[2][8]

That report also recounts the difficulty he experienced contacting family after the March 2011 earthquake, when he was in Tokyo. The experience is relevant to his expressed attachment to home, but it should not be turned into a sporting explanation for why he won. The more tangible link is his effort to create opportunities for children to encounter the game.^[8]

A new entry in an older tournament’s history

ANA’s official history begins with the 1973 All Nippon Airways Sapporo Open, won by Masashi Ozaki. Ozaki later set a tournament mark of 20 under in 1994; Aguri Iwasaki matched it in 2024. Naito’s 25 under moved the record five strokes further.^[9]

This is a tournament scoring record, distinct from a single-round course record. It also offers no simple way to rank players across eras: conditions, equipment and course preparation change. Its significance is more direct. A first-time regular-tour champion has placed his score alongside, and beyond, figures that stood prominently in the event’s own history.

At 44 years and 123 days, Naito was the fifth-oldest first-time winner in JGTO’s accounting. Age explains why the result attracted attention. The scorecard explains how he earned it. His final week was not merely the end of a wait: it was four rounds of progress, with the strongest late statement coming when a long-awaited opportunity still had to be secured.^[2][1]