Breaking through the ranks in his rookie season, the PGA Tour has a new star on the rise. Takumi Kanaya may have earned his PGA Tour card this year, but he has been a part of the system for some time now. However, unlike every other season, his goals are different this year. Competing in the Bank of Utah Championship, he aims to win his first PGA Tour event and kick off his journey on a high note. So we thought, why don’t we get to know Kanaya better before he reaches places?

On May 23, 1998, Miyako Kanaya and her husband, who resided in Hiroshima, Japan, were blessed with a boy. They named him Takumi. They raised him to dream big and, at the age of five, introduced him to golf. Since then, Takumi Kanaya has passionately pursued the sport as a career. While there isn’t much information about his schooling years, we do know that he attended Tohoku Fukushi University. If that sounds familiar to some of you, then you might remember that Hideki Matsuyama also graduated from the same university. We wonder if Kanaya will also follow the same career trajectory.

Interestingly, he began his journey in the majors by qualifying for the Masters Tournament. But before getting to that point, Kanaya had already achieved quite a few wins in his amateur career. In 2015, he captured the Japan Amateur Championship. He was a low amateur at the Japan Open Golf Championship in 2015 and 2017. Finally, in 2018, Kanaya won the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship. That helped him book a ticket in the 2019 Masters Tournament and Open Championship. He was only 20 years old when he faced the challenging fairways of Augusta National.

Yet, the recent win had given Kanaya enough confidence to at least make the cut and get a T58 finish. However, the windy conditions of the links course of the 2019 Open Championship were too difficult for him to tackle. Despite putting up a tough fight, the now-21-year-old Japanese pro missed the cut by 1 stroke. He wasn’t alone, as even big names like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Bryson DeChambeau couldn’t make the cut.

For the majority of 2020, Takumi Kanaya was ranked the world’s #1 amateur golfer. In fact, he maintained the rank for 55 weeks. The then 22-year-old finally decided that it was time to take things to the next level as he turned pro in October 2020. He made his professional debut in the Japan Open Golf Championship, where he finished 7th with a 1-under par, 4 strokes behind the champion, Yuki Inamori.

Over the years, he played in many events on the Japan Golf Tour and the PGA Tour. He has won a few in Japan and regularly participated in the Baycurrent Classic. In fact, in 2025, Kanaya got his best finish in the PGA Tour event in Japan, as he finished T4, with a 14-under par, 5 strokes behind Xander Schauffele. Since he’s a full-time member now, he continues to push through the FedEx Cup Fall season in search of his first victory on the PGA Tour.

That was all about the career of Takumi Kanaya. Now, let’s learn more about the life of the PGA Tour pro outside the course.

Family, friends, and hobbies of Takumi Kanaya

We’ve already learned about Takumi Kanaya’s mother, Miyako. However, there is not much information about his father. Kanaya dedicated his victory in the 2023 BMW Japan Golf Tour Championship to his mother, who was fighting breast cancer. In his victory speech, he confessed, “My mother is battling breast cancer, and this win is for her. Hopefully, it’ll go some way towards helping her with her recovery. It will make her happy.”

Interestingly, Kanaya beat old rival, Yuki Inamori, and also Keita Nakajima to capture the title in 2023. In fact, we mentioned Keita because he and Takumi have been close friends since a very young age. In his second-ever Instagram post, Kanaya shared a picture of them with a caption, “Keita-kun, thank you for this week 😳 Sorry for always bothering you🙇 @keita.nkjm.” This shows that Nakajima was a trusted friend back then. Since then, Kanaya has shared many other pictures of them.

Apart from golf, Takumi Kanaya also seems to be interested in other sports. In a post featuring a slideshow of his visit to the Bundesliga club, Bayern Munich’s stadium, he admitted that he had attended many soccer games in the past. He also shared a post of him attending an NBA game wearing a Miami Heat jersey. Interestingly, Kanaya confessed that it was his first time courtside. As he finds success on the PGA Tour, we’re sure fans will see more of Takumi Kanaya’s life on social media as the years go by.