Japan’s most successful professional golfer, Masashi ‘Jumbo’ Ozaki, has died at the age of 78.

Nicknamed Jumbo because of his length off the tee, Ozaki won 94 times on the Japan Tour and topped the country’s order of merit 12 times.

He was in the top 10 of golf’s rankings for nearly 200 weeks and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2011.

“While golf has long been popular in Japan, it was Ozaki who brought a new vitality to the game and his emergence spawned an unprecedented growth in the game in the country,” said his profile on the World Golf Hall of Fame website., external

Ozaki was a professional baseball player before switching to golf and winning his first tournament in 1973 at the age of 26, with his last coming when he was 55.

He had top 10 finishes at The Open, Masters and US Open and used to take a sushi chef with him when he played away from Japan “so that he and his entourage would feel more at home outside of their homeland”.

Ozaki also ventured into singing and had three singles in the Japanese charts in the late 1980s.

A statement on the Japan Golf Tour Organisation (JGTO) website said Ozaki’s son Tomoharu had announced his father had passed away after being diagnosed with colon cancer about a year ago.

“The golf world has lost a truly great man,” said JGTO chairman Yutaka Morohoshi., external

“He long steered the men’s professional golf world and overwhelmed others with his unparalleled strength.”