Why Nanoko Hayashi, who has secured her first appearance in a major U.S. tournament, says, “Golf has become so much more fun lately.

The right to challenge for the U.S. Open

I think one of the joys of golf is to enjoy dressing up. I think it is one of the joys of golf to enjoy dressing up. I can enjoy wearing skirts and dresses that I normally can’t wear on the golf course. I feel more comfortable when I wear cute clothes to a game, and I look forward to it every day.

Nanoko Hayashi (27), who has been a professional for eight years and has a chance to compete in a major U.S. golf tournament, shared her passion for golf wear during a talk show at the Shinjuku Takashimaya Department Store on April 27. In addition to promoting her contracted golf wear brand “Nissa Golf” by showing examples of coordinated outfits, she also enjoyed interacting with fans who visited the store by competing in a dracon competition in the trial hitting room and acting as the store manager for a day.

Hayashi participated in the U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship Japan Final Qualifying Tournament held on April 22 at Boso Country Club Boso Golf Course (Chiba Prefecture, Japan), where she finished in the top five of 129 players in the 36-hole, two-round, one-day stroke play event. She qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open, a major championship to be held at Erin Hills GC in Wisconsin, U.S.A. starting on May 29.

I was in good shape. I was thinking to myself, ‘If I’m going to make it, it will be this year. I thought if I got a chance like this, I would be able to make it, but I didn’t know when that chance would come.

Despite her anxiety, Hayashi was able to secure a ticket to the major leagues. She recalls that she used to have back pain.

What I did to heal my back pain

“I had back pain all the time, so much so that it was hard to go to games and sleep. …… I thought I had to live with the injury for a long time.

It was off-season last year that he found relief from his back pain. Hayashi, who normally does not talk about golf, unusually confided his golf problems to his trainer friend . He said, “That back pain can probably be cured. He advised, “You can probably recover from that back pain , although it will take a little too much time for it to heal in time for the season opener. There was a glimmer of hope.

I thought I should learn more about how the body works, so I asked many people for advice. I started studying what kind of training would be effective for my back pain last year from the off-season. I studied everything again, including the clubs (tools). I also read a lot of self-help books.

Among his references were the YouTube channel of Yusei Kikuchi, a pitcher for the U.S. Major League Baseball team Angels, and the books he was reading.

He explains in great detail about the body, so I went back to all of his books. I solved each problem one by one and found that my swing was getting better. Now my back doesn’t hurt at all!”

Knowing how the body works also helped him find answers from a different perspective.

He said, “What I thought was fatigue on the third and fourth days (of a four-day tournament) was actually just a postural imbalance. If you move your hip joints, you don’t put as much strain on your lower back, so the same movement doesn’t hurt. ……”

And it was at the U.S. Women’s Open qualifying round that she put into practice what she had worked on during her time off. On the day of the qualifying round, she did something different than she had done in the past and spent a 30-minute interval after completing one round.

I thought I might not be able to do it because of my lack of stamina, but I realized that it wasn’t that I didn’t have the stamina, but that my swing was shaky because of my posture, which was getting worse as the matches went on, making me feel like I had no stamina. So I decided to stretch to correct my posture, and when I finished the 18th hole, instead of eating, I did one more up-do, added some stretching, and then played the remaining 18 holes, so it wasn’t hard at all.

As a result of her own trial and error, she passed the qualifying round with a 36-hole score of 4-under, tied for second place, and finally won a ticket to the U.S. Women’s Open.

Be Yourself as Usual at the Majors

However, Hayashi also felt the effects of her learning were evident at her debut event of the season, the Yamaha Ladies Open Katsuragi, held from April 3 to 6, prior to the qualifying round.

I made birdie, birdie, birdie on the last three holes because I wasn’t tired at all on the last day. Normally, I would have tried to gain strength by running because I didn’t have the stamina, but what the heck, I just had a posture collapse. Then it became a good idea to do one more up so that my posture wouldn’t collapse. I got answers from people around me that I’d never thought of before, and once I put them into practice, good for me.”

These days, golf is definitely more fun than before. He says with a smile, “I really feel the joy of doing something like this and seeing the results, and it’s become a lot of fun. He will be playing in the U.S. majors at the end of May, and he says that he wants to be his normal self even overseas.

I am always aware that I am being watched, so I want to wear cute clothes and do my hair properly. This will be the first time that Nissa Golf will be overseas, so I want to wear something that will show the logo as much as possible, but I also need to do a lot of research on the temperature and other things, so I’m going to check …….”

Now that her dream of playing in a major overseas has come true, we asked Hayashi about her next dream.

My motivation for playing golf is that I want the people around me to be happy. I have continued to play golf partly because my parents were happy. When I hold an event and people say things like, ‘I’m so happy to see Nano-chan, she cheered me up,’ or ‘I’m going to work harder tomorrow after seeing her play,’ that makes me the happiest person in the world. If winning makes everyone happy, then I will aim to win. Rather than doing something for myself, I want to do something that makes others happy.

Hayashi makes everyone around her happy, and we look forward to seeing her on the domestic tour and in her first overseas major.