Among the Lotte Championship’s LPGA quirks are a Saturday finish and Sunday qualifier at Ko Olina Golf Club. That’s where Kalani alum Nicole Sakamoto will be this weekend.
Her dream is to be at Ko Olina all week, every week Lotte is here. Its latest extension takes it through 2020 and nearly all the top 30 players always make the trip.
That includes Wednesday through Saturday, when former champions Michelle Wie and Cristie Kerr, along with top-ranked Sung Hyun Park, Shanshan Feng, Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson highlight another top-heavy field.
Sakamoto’s professional dream is to golf with them all the time. She has spent the past four years living and working in Florida, and playing on the Symetra Tour — the LPGA’s developmental tour.
One of her personal dreams came true last Tuesday, when coach/caddie/partner Alvin Okada — who moved with her to Florida — proposed at the First Tee Shootout.
It was on the 18th hole — the ring actually fell out of his pocket and into a bunker that day — at Hoakalei Country Club, where they met 41⁄2 years ago. The wedding will be on New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas, where Okada’s parents married 32 years ago.
On the day of the proposal, Sakamoto was caddying for Okada. A Waianae graduate with game of his own, Okada advanced to the final eight at Hoakalei and plans to play the Mid-Pacific Open later this month.
But mostly, his life has revolved around Sakamoto and her golf for nearly five years.
“I knew the day we moved in together this would be the girl I’d spend the rest of my life with,” Okada said. “I told her I don’t want to scare you off, but I’m in it for keeps. I’m tired of playing games. Emotionally I was old, I’d been through a lot and she changed my life.
“If it wasn’t for her in my life, I don’t know where I’d be today. But I know I have her in it and she makes me want to be the best person I can be every day.”
Sakamoto learned the game from the late Hawaii Golf Hall of Famer Lance Suzuki, a “second father” who helped her get a golf scholarship to James Madison. Her game, and especially her confidence, blossomed. She won twice in college and cleaned up back home, capturing seven of the last 10 major Hawaii women’s championships she played.
When she turned pro in 2014, Okada became her mentor and got her to enjoy the game again after an early slump. An avid reader and golf historian, Okada has an outgoing, immensely curious personality that allowed him to go deep in search of helping Sakamoto succeed.
Sakamoto was good enough to get on the Symetra Tour, and a round away from reaching the LPGA at last year’s final Q-school. But she has earned just $20,000, so they worked other jobs, including for the Minor League Tour, to pay the bills.
Last summer, Okada reached out to three-time LPGA champ Donna White — the 1976 U.S. Women’s Amateur champ — to work on Sakamoto’s game. He had come to know some of her friends and knew White kept things simple, which Sakamoto needed.
He also knew his fiancee-to-be had stopped listening to him and he was ready to relinquish coaching duties and become full-time caddie.
“I have no ego when it comes to her,” Okada says. “Whatever is going to put money in our pockets and pay the bills, whatever works better for her game.”
White was surprised to get calls from two close friends about working with Sakamoto, and more surprised that she “hadn’t made a dime in four years” after watching her physical attributes and work ethic.
The challenge captured her imagination and the couple’s “calming family grateful attitude” and public-course upbringing hooked her.
“The neatest thing for me personally,” says White, a member of the LPGA Teaching and Club Professional Hall of Fame, “is both are just beautiful people. I felt very comfortable around both of them.”
She saw Okada back away to “empower” Sakamoto and was fine with letting him be her “mirror” and report back.
White first improved address positions and encouraged Sakamoto to work on her short game and fitness. White’s “self-directed learning” style is often based on key words and the current one is “wave,” as in “wave for dollars” — to help with the “hinge” on her swing.
White started PGA star Brooks Koepka in her junior program at Okeeheelee Golf Course, a county facility in West Palm Beach, Fla. Sakamoto and Okada both work and practice there now when she is not on tour — in tournament management, with juniors and even on the beverage cart.
In the past few months, White has coached Sakamoto to three top-25 Symetra finishes, including 24th at this year’s first stop. Sakamoto also won a Suncoast Ladies Tour event in February by birdieing three of the last five.
“She’s started to grow as a player and trust her own abilities a lot more,” White says. “Her performance has proven that. …She understands her tendencies and self-corrects on her own and Alvin allowed that.
“For the first time, she sees herself as being competitive. She was in the third-from-final group at Q-School and most of those girls are playing on tour now. She has the potential, but it has to be her desire, not anyone else’s.”
It hasn’t been easy, but the progress has been vivid. In the past year there is less “bickering” and Okada has accepted he can’t control what happens to the golf ball.
I knew we were at a crossroads,” he says. “I knew I could be coach or caddie, and I can be a good caddie because I can shut up.
“My dream has always been to see her do what she wants to do. My job is to push her to her limits.”
And shut up and carry the bag, for now. Sakamoto knows her golf clock is ticking and, through it all, she has appreciated nearly every tick.
“I don’t think it’s always been fun,” she admits, “but being able to grow up a little … for me, I was never independent. We toughed it out for the last years.”
Then Okada, unable to shut up any longer, finishes her thought.
“Seeing her get better every year, get closer and closer to where I think she should be and seeing her believe it,” he says, “it’s been awesome to see her grow.”
The Lotte has extended sponsor exemptions to local amateurs Anna Umemura, Patty Schremmer and Malia Nam to play in Sunday’s qualifier. Admission is free Sunday through Tuesday and $10 Wednesday through Saturday.
