Masashi Ozaki

Masashi Ozaki was a Japanese professional golfer, born on January 24, 1947 in Kaifu District, Tokushima Prefecture, now Kaiyo Town. He pitched for the Nishitetsu Lions in professional baseball before turning to golf in 1970, and for decades he was the figure the Japanese men’s game revolved around, known to everyone as Jumbo. He won 94 times on the Japan Golf Tour and 113 times as a professional counting the years before the tour was formalised, and his 12 money titles remain the Japanese record. He entered the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2011 and died on December 23, 2025 at the age of 78. What follows is not an account of his playing career but of his work as a course designer.

Ozaki began taking on design work around 1990. The golf information site Golf Lab sums up his courses as bold layouts built on length, a way of thinking that came naturally to a player whose driving was among the longest of his era, and notes that the ground around his greens shows the influence of American and Scottish courses. Among the courses he worked on are Zuien Country Club Eniwa Course (Hokkaido, 1990), Ishioka West Country Club (Ibaraki, 1990), Tsu Country Club (Mie, 1990), Fuji Stadium Golf Club (Shiga), The Masters Golf Club Amakusa Course (Kumamoto, 1996), J Classic Golf Club (Tokushima, 1998), which he built in his home prefecture, and Saku Resort Golf Club (Nagano, 1999).

Most of Ozaki’s courses were made jointly with the architect Kentaro Sato. Sato was born in Akita Prefecture in 1947, worked on course inspection and construction from 1973, and founded M&K Co., Ltd. in 1988. According to the Japan Society of Golf Course Architects, he took to heart the philosophy of the British architect David Thomas and holds that a golf course should be grand, beautiful and strategic all at once. He serves as the society’s chairman and has designed, supervised or remodelled 27 courses in Japan and 13 abroad, working across China, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia. The division of labour between the two was straightforward: Sato handled the drawings and the earthworks, and Ozaki advised from a player’s point of view.

Among the courses GoGolf lists, one is the work of the pair: Templer Park Country Club in Rawang, Selangor, Malaysia. The club’s own website credits the design to Kentaro Sato with Masashi Ozaki advising, and gives the opening date as April 27, 1991. It was the first Japanese-financed golf club in Malaysia, an 18-hole par 72 laid out below the limestone peak of Bukit Takun. It has hosted the Malaysian Open three times, in 1995, 1996 and 2000. The course is not currently open for booking through GoGolf; it appears on the site as an information page only.

Courses listed for information only

The following course is not currently open for booking through GoGolf. It appears on the site as an information page only.

• Templer Park Country Club (Rawang, Selangor, Malaysia) — opened April 27, 1991. The first Japanese-financed golf club in Malaysia

See the other golf course architects here.