The rule states, for a player without tour seed, limited sponsor invitation appearance for this season is 7 tournaments. Next week, Shunsuke Sonoda is facing his last 7th invitation tournament. Today, on his 6th sponsor invited tournament, he scored 65 and showing a good move for a comeback.

"Much appreciation to the tournament sponsor, that I am eligible to be here this week. It weighs more pressure but I am getting back on the track."

He faced trouble on 1 st as his tee shot went into right-side roughs, but as he did on 8th, he made 4-meter par save and returned without making any bogeys.

On 11th and 12th, he made back-to-back chip-in from 15 yards.

"On 12th, it could have turned sideways and ended up as a bogey, but it went in. Other than that lucky break, I feel that my good game is coming back. It is not like somehow it's good, I know it's good."

Shunsuke says, his feeling, score, and result is finally matching. He started golf very young and went abroad to Australia to brush up his golf. During his high school days, Ryo Ishikawa 2 years younger than Shunsuke called him "King of golf". He turned professional in 2009, his sophomore year in Meiji University and won his first Tour victory on his 5th tournament, Mizuno Yomiuri Classic. In 2013, he had serious knee injury, but soon after his comeback he won his 2nd victory.

But everything fell apart in 2018.

"Until then, I was able to do well somehow without not knowing the calculation. But after I hit the wall of losing confidence, I had no way to solve the problem, because I didn't know how to solve it."

He only made 2 cuts out of 21 tournaments and lost his seed. He also failed to pass the QT. He went back to basics to rebuild his game.

"I started out from zero. I used many measuring devices to understand my swing with numbers. So that I could figure out why the result happened from the swing I made. It took me very long time to figure out, but this year my challenge is paying off. I have regained my confidence."

As he stated, he finished 1st at 2nd QT last week. This season he is only appearing on the tournaments with sponsors invitation. Next week's VISA Taiheiyo Masters will be his last, but a week before today he made a great start and finished as a leader of 1R.

"I know I will be so conscience on 3R, but it is still 1R. My prior aim is to keep up the golf that I did today onto tomorrow."