Koichi Ono: Famous Win Spurred Japanese Golf
Birth name: Son Shi-Kin
Date of birth: May 19, 1919
Place of birth: Dalian, Manchuria
Date of death: November 6, 2000
His Biggest Wins
- 1949 Kanto Pro Championship
- 1951 Japan Open Golf Championship
- 1953 Japan Open Golf Championship
- 1954 Yomiuri Pro Championship
- 1955 Japan Open Golf Championship
- 1955 Japan PGA Championship
- 1957 Canada Cup team championship (partnered by Torakichi Nakamura)
- 1957 Yomiuri Pro Championship
- 1958 Kanto Pro Championship
- 1959 Kanto Pro Championship
- 1962 Kanto Pro Championship
- 1963 Kanto Pro Championship
More About Koichi Ono
In 1957, Japan was the host of the Canada Cup. That's the tournament later known as the World Cup (and for a time a WGC event) in which 2-man teams competed for their countries. The PGA Tour has referred to that 1957 Canada Cup as the "first major international golf tournament played in Asia."Koichi Ono and Torakichi (Pete) Nakamura represented Japan, and when Japan won by nine strokes over Team USA (Sam Snead/Jimmy Demaret), it sent shock waves through the international golf scene. Nakamura won the individual title and ascended to movie-star-level fame in Japan. Ono finished fifth individually and became very famous, as well.
Ono was 37 years old at the time, a 5-foot-9-inch golfer weighing 140 pounds. Famed golf journalist Herbert Warren Wind, in Sports Illustrated, wrote that "Ono has a very flat backswing on which he loosely flips the club open and shut with his wrists." Wind was unimpressed with Ono's driving and iron play (the word "serviceable" was used), but Gary Player, who played in the tournament, said afterward of the Japanese team, "I've never seen such putting in my life."
Why was that event, and Ono's part in it, so important in golf history? The 1957 Canada Cup was, the editors of the 1975, U.K.-published The Encyclopedia of Golf wrote, "a turning point in the history of Japanese golf."
The tournament and its effect on golf in Japan and the Far East has often been compared to Francis Ouimet's stirring victory in the 1913 U.S. Open and that event's spurring of great growth of the game in America. According to one expert on Japanese golf, at the time of the 1957 Canada Cup there were 116 golf courses in the country. But over the next 20-some years, nearly 1,300 more were built.
That tournament wasn't Ono's first time playing for Japan in the World Cup. He debuted in 1955, and also played in 1958 and 1960.
Koichi Ono was born as Son Shi-Kin in Dairen, Manchuria, an area that is now part of China (and the city is known as Dalian today).
Ono began caddying at a golf club there, which, at the time, had a clientele of Japanese officials and businessmen. As his promise as a golfer became obvious, one of those businessmen helped Ono immigrate to Japan in 1937, and he went to work at Hodogaya Golf Club in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. He remained associated with that club for most of the rest of his life, often working there as an instructor.
Post-World War II, Ono started winning tournaments on the reconstituted Japanese golf scene. The Kanto Pro Championship was played from 1931 through 1990 (with a wartime break), and Ono's first big victory was in the 1949 edition.
At that time, he was still using his birth name, and you can still find "Son Shi-Kin" listed in some golf histories and lists of tournament winners. He changed his name to "Koichi Ono" when he became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1954.
Ono went on to win the Kanto tournament four more times, back-to-back in 1958-59, and successively again in 1962-63.
He won the Japan Open in 1951 and 1953 under his birth name, and won again in 1955 as Ono. He was also the runner-up in the Japan Open in 1960 and 1961.
In the Japan PGA Championship, Ono was the winner in 1955, and runner-up in 1949, 1950, 1954 and 1959.
He had a knack for finishing second in the first year that several tournaments were played. The Crowns (Chunichi Crowns) tournament was first played in 1960 and Ono was second. The Golf Nippon Series, a major on the Japan Tour today, was first played in 1963 and Ono finished second. He was also runner-up the first time the Thailand Open took place, 1965.
Ono's last big win was in the 1963 Kanto Pro Championship, but he was competitive for a while longer. Other second-place finishes included the 1963 Korean Open, 1967 Yomiuri International, and 1970 Indian Open.
The Japan Golf Tour that exists today was founded in 1973, well past Ono's prime years (he was in his mid-50s by then). He did play the tour, though, from 1973 through 1977.
He was inducted into the Japan Professional Golf Hall of Fame in 2012.
Sources:
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
Brenner, Morgan. The Majors of Golf, Volume 2, 2009, McFarland and Company.
Japan Golf Hall of Fame. Honorees, Koichi Ono, https://www.golfdendou.jp/commendation/ono.
Japan Golf Tour. Koichi Ono, Stats, Koichi Ono, https://www.jgto.org/en/player/205/data.
Martin, Sean. "Five Things to Know: Olympic golf venue," July 24, 2021, https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2021/07/25/five-things-to-know-olympic-golf-venue-kasumigaseki-country-club-tokyo.
Ohnishi, Hisamitsu. "Japanese golf courses: a brief overview," from Golf Architecture: Volume I: A Worldwide Perspective, by Geoffrey Cornish, Pelican Publishing, 2002.
Steel, Donald, and Ryde, Peter. The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1975, The Viking Press.
Werden, Lincoln A. "Japanese Golfers Hope to Have Masters Touch," The New York Times, March 21, 1958, https://www.nytimes.com/1958/03/21/archives/japanese-golfers-hope-to-have-masters-touch-nakamura-and-ono-not.html.
