Most of the live broadcasts of major golf tournaments are in the early morning hours of Japan time.
As I have already mentioned, I have a TV set that I use to watch sports broadcasts.
I have been watching most of the PGA and LPGA major tournaments for quite some time now.
It's a phenomenon when a Japanese player has a chance to win, but I wake up at an unbelievably early hour.
This time was no different.
I went to bed at half-past midnight last night and woke up before 3:30 a.m. Why?
I was about to go back to sleep, but I woke up at 3:30 a.m. "Why the hell not? I haven't slept for three hours..." I thought, but then I woke up.
I had recorded all the matches of the U.S. Women's Open, which was being broadcast live on WOWOW.
Since it was the last day of the tournament, I figured that Ms. Saso should have started, so I decided to watch it live instead of playing it back.
It must have woken me up this time, too, I thought.
The competition was nearing the half-turn.
Sasao had double bogeys on the second and third holes in a row, while Lexie Thompson, who had started the day with a one-shot lead, had improved her score to eight under.
Sasao had dropped to third place, not second.
Not only did Lexie have a five-shot lead over second place, but everything was going well.
MS. Hataoka had improved her score a bit to 2 under, but she hit a double bogey.
Hataoka showed no signs of breaking down any further and was back up to 1 under.
Sasao, too, did not seem to be in the kind of shape that would cause her to lose ground.
Not only was the gap between Lexie and the second-place finishers too large, but there was a strong feeling that Lexie was going it alone this time and that she would be the first to win the U.S. Women's Open.
Lexie's unique style of hitting seemed to be a perfect match for this course, as she is a famous long drive player.
After the half-turn, I went back to sleep when Hataoka followed Sasao to the 11th hole.
I think 100% victory for Lexie, with Hataoka and Sasao putting up a good fight.
I woke up a little after 8:00, watched the broadcast, and was immensely surprised.
It was the biggest surprise I've ever experienced in all my years of watching significant sports broadcasts.
The reason was that the message that appeared on the screen was a playoff between Hataoka and Sasao.
On the third hole, the decisive hole, Sasao hit a spectacular shot from the rough and hit the green for a birdie.
Sports are truly amazing.
The Communist Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, Asahi, and other newspapers are campaigning to cancel the Tokyo Olympics.
It is no exaggeration to say that the so-called intellectuals (the Asahi Shimbun and NHK culture people), NHK, and private TV stations sympathetic to this movement, are human waste.
If the Wuhan virus is so dangerous, why don't you direct your anger at China to match its danger?
The Japanese people who sympathize with them and vote for them should be ashamed of themselves because sports, true athletes, are precisely the opposite of you.
Even among athletes, there are some half-hearted ones.
Most of them are not genuinely top-notch athletes, not truly world-renowned athletes.
Some are athletes of the Asahi Shimbun and the German purveyors of anti-Japanese propaganda, a lowly country.
Instead, it is the ones who are genuinely trying to hone their skills and become the best in the world, usually those who have nothing to do with television.
Even those who have the potential to conquer the world are far from being the best in the world the moment they become strangely familiar with television.
Such half-baked fools do not even realize that this is what television is all about.
Learn from Germany.
The people trying to cancel the Tokyo Olympics are at the extreme of pseudo-moralism, so I guess they don't know anything about the truth.
I have one thing to say to them in this column.
Learn from Germany and outlaw the Communist Party.
It is no exaggeration to say that that is all you need to do.