'How in the world could I catch up with admiring university senior Hideki Matsuyama' is one big task that is hanging on Kazuki Higa's shoulders. On his 4 th year as a professional, Kazuki Higa scored 69 to finish as 3T with Shugo Imahira and Rikuya Hoshino going onto weekends.

Kazuki's tee shots were perfect today on narrow fairways.
"I was able to keep the fairways today, and my distance control on my short irons were good too."
As he said, his shots were consistent and gave him 3 straight birdies from 6th.

Nowadays, there are so many talented players who are Tohoku Fukushi University current students and graduates on the Tour. Kazuki himself is one of them, and Hideki Matsuyama also a graduate has been taking really good care of Kazuki.

When Kazuki failed on his QT challenge in his Senior year, Hideki gave advice to brush up his golf challenging the Asian cub-tours. After Kazuki turned Pro in 2018, he has won at the cub-tour on his first challenge. Then after he returned to Japan, he won at Japan's cub-tour, went on to win his first victory on the Regular Tour in 2019's RIZAP KBC Augusta.

He has been successfully climbing up the ladder, and Hideki has been telling Kazuki to "come challenge on the US PGA Tour", but Kazuki says, "after seeing Hideki win The Masters, I can't imagine myself catching up to him. Hideki has taken really good care of me during my university years, and I wish I could catch up to his stage and challenge the US PGA Tour, but I just don't know how in the world I could catch up with him. US PGA Tour is above the clouds to me. I know that even Hideki made success, that don't mean I could. But at least I want to be able to challenge on that stage too."

The winner of this will be invited to The British Open.
"I hope I could be in contention at my Sunday back nine."