Six years ago, a golfer from Japan won the Masters, and the world remembers the caddie almost as vividly as the champion. Shota Hayafuji removed his hat, standing on the 18th green at Augusta National, and bowed to the course — a gesture that turned a green jacket into a shared story. Now Hideki Matsuyama’s longtime caddie is done for the year, and the reason is more serious than first reported.
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Hayafuji is out for the remainder of the season with a neck injury, not the back issue initially described, as reported by Golfweek. According to his longtime manager and interpreter, Bob Turner, the pain has radiated down Hayafuji’s right shoulder and arm, and he recently told Turner he couldn’t even make a fist with his right hand.
Hayafuji was expected to return at the Wyndham Championship, but the update has ruled his return out. Matsuyama has since given him the rest of the season off, a stretch that’s expected to include the Presidents Cup at Medinah, where Matsuyama is a near-lock for the International Team. Taiga Tabuchi will take over the bag in Hayafuji’s absence.
Matsuyama enters the BMW Championship 15th in the FedEx Cup standings, comfortably inside the top-30 cutoff for the Tour Championship. He’ll play the season’s biggest stretch without the man who has read his putts for years.
This isn’t really a new arrangement, though. Hayafuji and Tabuchi had already been splitting time ever since Hayafuji’s child was born earlier in the year. A neck injury on top of that just means the split turns into a full handoff for the rest of the season.
Tabuchi has been through this once already. When Hayafuji’s passport was stolen during a London theft while Matsuyama’s team was traveling to Memphis after the 2024 Paris Olympics, Tabuchi picked up the bag for the FedEx St. Jude Championship and figured out the yardages as the week went. Matsuyama won by two strokes anyway. Tabuchi normally caddies for fellow Japanese pro Ryo Hisatsune and has joined Matsuyama for practice rounds before, so the two aren’t strangers.
“I’m just carrying the bag and trying not to bother him,” Tabuchi said at the time, a modest description of a job that ended in a trophy.
Handling one week under pressure is one thing. Staying locked in for a full stretch is another. The small stuff, reading a lie correctly, knowing when Matsuyama wants a word and when he’d rather be left alone, usually comes from years on the bag together, not a couple of tournaments filling in.
The scorecard hasn’t shown any strain yet. Matsuyama tied for seventh at the Wyndham Championship at 14-under, then tied for seventh again at the FedEx St. Jude Championship at 6-under, the sixth straight top-15 finish in a stretch that includes 20 made cuts in 20 regular-season starts. Hayafuji is reportedly targeting a return at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan this October.
Until then, the partnership that produced a green jacket and eleven PGA Tour wins stays on hold, with the BMW Championship and Tour Championship still to come.