Dave Reardon: Past Manoa Cup champs still profess their love of the game

Joshua Hayashida is trying to accomplish something that hasn’t been done since 1932. That’s when Francis Ii Brown won his third-consecutive Manoa Cup.

Hayashida, a senior-to-be on the University of Hawaii golf team, is off to a good start at the tournament that determines the state’s amateur match play champion, which he won for the first time in 2023 when he was 19 and again last year.

He knocked off Alan Wong, 5 and 3, in Tuesday’s round of 64 at Oahu Country Club.

“I love match play,” Hayashida says. “I have the freedom to hit the shots I want to hit and the freedom to be as aggressive as I want to be.”

Hayashida speaks of how you can demoralize your opponent by coming back strong on a hole to halve or win it despite a poor drive or even second shot. That’s what happened on No. 13 when he recovered from hitting a tree to take the hole.

And he loves the Manoa Cup tradition that dictates the players walk the course. Carts are for caddies.

“Definitely,” he says. “If we’re all riding it becomes all physical. Walking forces you to train your mind to stay in the moment.”

His dad, Glen, caddied for him Monday.

“It’s all right,” Joshua says. “He mostly likes to drive the cart.”

Gunnar Lee, a senior-to-be at Moanalua and the reigning OIA Player of the Year, had no caddie Tuesday, so he pushed a cart holding his golf bag around the hilly Nuuanu course. His opponent, Joseph Ferrall, was in the same boat, so it was a fair fight.

“Joseph made it very interesting, with birdies on 15 and 16,” says Lee, who won 3 and 1 after having his lead cut in half on those two holes.

This is Lee’s third Manoa Cup. When he was 15, he lost in the first round. Last year he made it to the second. He knows he has a tough task to make it to the third round by beating No. 2 seed Remington Hirano, who was Monday’s medalist with a 68.

“That’s the kind of thing that is good for a young player to experience,” Brandan Kop says, of Lee surviving Ferrall’s late surge. “You gotta experience how the game ebbs and flows. Too many easy matches won’t help you.”

Kop knows of what he speaks. He came close to winning three in a row here, but Shane Hoshino caught him late in the 1999 final.

It would have been the fifth career Manoa Cup championship for Kop, who has played in so many of them he has lost count. He thinks it might be around 40. He is sure, though, that he has made it through the qualifier and into the brackets every time except for his first try, when he shot 83 at age 12.

“Now I’m 64,” Kop says. “I said I’d play til I’m 65, but as long as I’m competitive and can win some matches, why not?”

On Tuesday, Kop dispatched Jarryd Gano, 5 and 4. Kop fell behind when he bogeyed the first hole when his second shot landed in mud in front of the green. But by the turn he was 1 up, and needed just a few holes on the back nine to finish it.

“I get to come back tomorrow … if I can make it,” Kop says, holding his knee, but laughing.

Kop shot 69 in the qualifier round Monday, on a course where he has fashioned a 63 several times.

“It was windy, but I had eight birdies, six on the back nine. Too bad I was in four bunkers,” he says, then adds, with a laugh. “Hey, maybe I can shoot my age. It’s getting easier.”

He knows it really doesn’t, but it is possible. As for walking the course, Kop says he doesn’t mind — for this one week a year, anyway.

“I read a study that said even if you ride you take 5,000 steps and it’s 10,000 if you walk,” he says.

The list gets longer every year of players who hit the ball longer than Kop, but he says that with a smile, like he does just about everything.

He ticks the names off, partly in awe, and partly with pride because he has mentored them.

“(Defending women’s champion) Jasmine Wong, Kara Kaneshiro, Marissa Chow (didn’t enter this year), the girls outdrive me all the time … and Alexa (Takai) is getting close, too,” says Kop, speaking of the phenom and younger sister of his caddie Tuesday, Victoria Takai.

Kop’s dad, Daniel, who died in 2016, caddied for him the years when he won the Manoa Cup. These days, he can get one of the dozens of junior golfers he has coached for free over the years to tend to his clubs.

“The week before (the Manoa Cup) I play 18 holes every day except one, and 36 on one,” says Kop, who has owned a successful golf equipment, accessories and sports apparel business since 1983, the year he won his first Manoa Cup, and one after he earned a business degree at UH. “The juniors come and play with me. The joke is I’m the only instructor who pays his students. I take care of it because golf has been good to me.”

In 2008, he was inducted into the Hawaii Golf Hall of Fame … following his grandfather Guinea and his uncle Wendell. Some of the youngsters who play against him in matches know nothing of any of this — until a parent tells them, after the match.

“They’re getting younger and younger, and the skill level is getting better and better. They all hit it long now, the boys and the girls. When I coach juniors, I tell them everything is predetermined so there’s no reason to worry, it is predetermined they will make the putt,” Kop says. “But match play is about how you control your mind.”