"Wago, the battle ground for this Crowns gets tougher as you play and play" says, Katsumasa Miyamoto, who was born on 47th year of Showa Era (1972), now 46, turning 47 this year. He might have a lot of experiences, but that does not work so easy on this course. Actually, past experience makes the players nervous, since they know how hard this course can turn into. With that said, on the 3rd Round, wind factor came in to make it worse.

"Jung-Gon played so beautifully, and Atomu's iron shots were hot! I envy them" said Katsumasa as he played along with Jung-Gon Hwang and Atomu Shigenaga.

"My shots felt not sharp enough, and when I started to end up in the roughs, it was pretty hard to find the greens."
But he managed to come through with his new 39inch putter. On 13th, he made a 5-meter par saving putt. And on the 14th where he hit the trees on his 2nd shot, his 3rd shot almost found the cup which ended as an easy par save.

"These 2 holes save the day" he recalled but unfortunately, he 3 putted the next 15th for a bogey. He is always a positive guy, but today he was feeling a bit down.
"I had 3 more tough holes left" he cried out negatively to his caddy. But the caddy encouraged him with a positive word.

"Her encouragement really worked."
As Katsumasa said, he bounced back with a birdie on 16th and added another one on the final 18th with a 3-meter birdie putt and finished just 1 shot behind the leader, at solo 2nd.

Katsumasa has won on 2017 season, but he finished 74th on the Money Ranking last season and lost his seed. But he was motivated by his brotherly figure players. Hiroyuki Fujita, who is 50 years old and entering Senior Tour is training harder than ever. The team leader Nobuo Serizawa went through a surgery for hip osteoarthritis, placed 12cm titanium hip joint last August, but made the cut this week, first time in 7 years.

"He practices so much as he did 20 years ago, so I got worried. But his strong behavior made me practice more and more."
Having great icons to follow, Man born in Showa Era will seek for comeback Reiwa Era victory.

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