Japan’s most successful professional golfer, Masashi ‘Jumbo’ Ozaki, has died at the age of 78.<\/p>\n
Nicknamed Jumbo because of his length off the tee, Ozaki won 94 times on the Japan Tour and topped the country’s order of merit 12 times.<\/p>\n
He was in the top 10 of golf’s rankings for nearly 200 weeks and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2011.<\/p>\n
“While golf has long been popular in Japan, it was Ozaki who brought a new vitality to the game and his emergence spawned an unprecedented growth in the game in the country,” said his profile on the World Golf Hall of Fame website., external<\/a> <\/p>\n Ozaki was a professional baseball player before switching to golf and winning his first tournament in 1973 at the age of 26, with his last coming when he was 55.<\/p>\n He had top 10 finishes at The Open, Masters and US Open and used to take a sushi chef with him when he played away from Japan “so that he and his entourage would feel more at home outside of their homeland”.<\/p>\n Ozaki also ventured into singing and had three singles in the Japanese charts in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n A statement on the Japan Golf Tour Organisation (JGTO) website said Ozaki’s son Tomoharu had announced his father had passed away after being diagnosed with colon cancer about a year ago.<\/p>\n