Two guys with a passion for golf put on a show in Saturday’s final of the 105th Manoa Cup. Jared Sawada turned out to be the star of the show.

Through the grind of Hawaii’s most prestigious amateur championship, Sawada and Richard Hattori showered 18 birdies into the wind and rain of Oahu Country Club.

Eleven belonged to Sawada, who won 2 and 1 after some seven hours of remarkably steady and often-spectacular golf between friends.

“I just had to keep the ball in front of me, keep it in the fairway,” said Sawada, who missed just three greens in regulation in the afternoon. “When I had wedges in my hand I played really aggressive, went straight at the pin. When I had irons I just tried to play for the middle of the green. I went after the holes that I could.”

He needed six birdies in the morning round just to stay close as Hattori played OCC in a bogey-free 5 under par.

“Richard hits the ball really straight and very far,” Sawada said. “He hits his irons much farther than me. And he can play a draw and a fade — versus me, I can only play a fade.”

He has played it so well in the past year that Evan Kawai, a 13-year-old who teamed with Sawada to win the Francis Brown Four Ball title, gave it a name: the “Sawada Cutie.”

“I only play the ‘Sawada Cutie,’ ” the winner grinned. “And I played it all day.”

To a championship, in a tournament that has been won by 19 guys who are now in the Hawaii Golf Hall of Fame.

Hattori made him fight for every hole. He took a 2-up advantage to lunch when Sawada bogeyed the 17th and 18th. Sawada caught him with birdies on two of the first five holes in the afternoon round. Hattori hit in the bunker on both.

“My game was just not quite good enough,” said Hattori, who just graduated from high school and is contemplating a career on the Japan tour. “My chipping kind of let me down a few times. … But it was good, a great experience. I had a lot of fun.”

Sawada, a 2008 Mililani graduate who just got his sociology degree from the University of Hawaii, seized his first lead after Hattori finally blinked. He hit in the bunker again at the par-3 ninth and 11th, then lipped out par putts from 5 feet.

“Richard’s putting was solid; he made so many par putts, so many birdie putts,” Sawada said. “It just felt like it kind of ran out toward the back nine.”

Hattori got one back on Sawada’s only bad hole — a double bogey on the 32nd (No. 14) — but Sawada promptly birdied to go 2 up again.

He had a 20-footer to win it all on the next, but blew it by and needed a 6-footer just to halve the hole. Earlier in the afternoon, Sawada missed a trio of 6-foot birdie putts that would have made his 22-year-old life much easier. This one he drained.

Both nearly drove the 35th hole (par-4 17th), and Sawada had another chance to clinch from the fringe. This time he played it safe, chipping 3 feet short and sinking the birdie putt to close it out and get the traditional dunking in OCC’s pool.

“I just can’t wait to get thrown in that pool,” Sawada said. “I’ve been dreaming of it, envisioned it for the last few years. I always got jealous of the people who got to jump in, but I was never, ever serious enough about golf, or good enough, to make it that far. But last year I started to feel like I was good enough.”

It took time and tribulation to get to that point. After playing in his first three WAC Championships at UH, he did not make a road trip his senior season — until he closed fast at the Mid-Pacific Open and was invited to his final WAC tournament.

“That meant everything to me,” Sawada said. “That fourth one meant everything. If I didn’t get to go on that road trip I might have quit golf.”

Now he, like the extremely focused Hattori, is also planning a professional career. It is a dramatic turnaround for a guy who preferred poker to golf for most of his college career.

“Now I love golf. At one point I hated it. I did not want to play at all,” Sawada admits. “But you get what you deserve. I wasn’t practicing and I couldn’t play good. Now I just understand the game a lot better, so I think that’s why I’m loving the game so much more. I understand what happens when you perform well.”

When it was over, Hattori, who works with Hall of Famer David Ishii, looked over at Sawada and grinned.

“We’re even now,” he said, referring to the playoff he won over Sawada last November that got him into this year’s Sony Open in Hawaii.

For now, both plan to try to qualify for that amateur slot again. If Sawada doesn’t get it, he will try to qualify for Sony as a pro.

Golf is much different for him over the past year. He knows where his irons are going and hits most greens. He loves the game, and isn’t ashamed to let everyone know.

Everything about golf suddenly makes sense.

“I know I can hit the shot I want to hit,” he says simply. “Except for the draw. I cannot hit that.”