Hideki Matsuyama hoping to take the Green Jacket back home to Japan

No Japanese player has ever won the Masters. On Saturday, Hideki Matsuyama played his way into prime position to be the first.

Nearly 7,000 miles separate Augusta National Golf Club from Hideki Matsuyama’s native Japan. The Masters’ iconic Green Jacket has never made that long trip across the Pacific. Matsuyama hopes to change on Sunday.

Matsuyama shot a bogey-free round of seven-under 65 on Saturday at the Masters and will take a four-shot lead into the final 18 holes. He played his final eight holes in six-under to finish at 11-under for the tournament, becoming the first Japanese player to ever hold an overnight lead at the Masters.

Matsuyama was one-under on his round and two off the lead when he hit his tee shot on the difficult par-four 11th hole well to the right. It was then that he got a blessing from the skies: a 77-minute weather delay. He spent the break simply sitting in his car looking at his phone, but when he made it back on the course, he couldn’t miss.

He hit his second shot on 11 through a gap in the trees onto the green and made the putt for a birdie. He birdied the par-three 12th hole. At the par-five 15th, his second shot from 205 yards settled just six feet from the cup and led to an eagle. His approach shot at the 16th finished within four feet for another birdie.

Even when he finally hit a bad shot, sending his shot from the fairway bunker on 18 well over the green and into the gallery, he recovered to save par. It was the first bogey-free round any player had shot this week and put Matsuyama firmly in position to take the Green Jacket back home to his golf-mad nation.

“Before the horn blew, I didn’t hit a very good drive,” he told CBS’s Jim Nantz through an interpreter in Butler Cabin afterward. “But after the horn blew for the restart, I hit practically every shot exactly how I wanted to.”

A decade ago to the day, Matsuyama was in the same room as a 19-year-old amateur after finishing as low amateur at the Masters. Augusta National created the Asian Amateur Championship to expand the reach of the game and of the Masters tournament. Matsuyama won that tournament twice to earn his spot in the Masters field, a fitting representative for a country desperately in search of a golf hero.

He’s 18 holes away from becoming that hero. The highest finish by a Japanese player at the Masters was fourth place by Shingo Katayama in 2009. Just a week ago, Tsubasa Kajitani won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur to lead the way for Japanese players here at Augusta. Matsuyama didn’t get to watch her victory — he was playing in the Valero Texas Open — but he’s very much aware of what it meant for the country and what his win would symbolize.

“I hope I can follow in her shoes and make Japan proud,” he said.

It will be around three in the morning in Japan by the time he tees off in the final group on Sunday. But there likely won’t be many people sleeping at that hour, as Matsuyama takes not only the lead but the hopes and dreams of his native land into the final round.