Hideki Matsuyama does not feel the pressure of defending a World Golf Championships title will affect his game this week at the WGC-HSBC Champions.
The Japanese's victory at Sheshan International Golf Club last October came as part of a run of four wins in as many months worldwide and helped catapult him to Number Two in the Official World Golf Ranking.
The 25 year old has successfully defended a title before at the Waste Management Phoenix Open on the US PGA Tour and after last year's commanding seven-shot victory, arrives in Shanghai as one of the favourites.
Matsuyama is not getting ahead of himself, however, and insists he is still learning as he cements himself as one of the superstars of world golf.
"It's great to be back in Shanghai," he said. "It's been a year. I'm very excited to be here and hopefully I can play well and be a worthy defending champion.
"It is different coming back as defending. I don't want to put a lot of pressure or expectations on myself, just let the tournament come to me like it did last year. All I can do is just try to play my best and hopefully that will work out well.
"To stay on top, to continue on top, I'm still learning how to do that and that's one of my goals, one of the things that I'm working on now is to be able to stay on top of my game."
While Matsuyama is the defending champion here and also holds the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational title, Dustin Johnson holds the other two World Golf Championships trophies.
His win at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in March made him the first player to win all four WGCs as the World Number One continued his current spell of dominance.
"Going back to 2016, I had a really, really good year, especially in the beginning, I played really solid pretty much every week," said Johnson. "Then won the US Open and then won Bridgestone and I won BMW (Championship). I was playing pretty well.
"My game, it just improved and I felt like I consistently was playing good. In the off-season, I felt like I had a good off-season just with practising and playing. I felt like 2017, this year, was going to be a really good year."
