BRADENTON, Fla. – Two weeks ago, Collin Morikawa was desperate for a change. Arguably the top iron player in the world, he also happened to be one of the worst putters – he placed 213rd out of 236 players on the PGA Tour. This significant difference led to the frequently used line: Well, if he could do just a few more putts …
Because we have already seen what can happen when he marries the two. At the PGA Tournament last August, Morikawa led the field in approach play and putting, and with that unstoppable combination he defeated the deepest field in golf for his major progressive title. .
But that was only a hot week, not a preview of the rest of his career. Going back to the days of young golf, Morikawa has always relied on his iron playing as he struggled on his greens. “I never felt comfortable,” he said. “You saw it.” The fear finally boiled down two weeks ago, when he was working at home in Las Vegas. He had heard of Mark O’Meara’s “saw” grip, and stopped and spoke to the main champion twice for an hour at the Club Summit. Morikawa tried the saw the next day but did nothing.
And yet …
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“For some reason, I couldn’t sleep, and that never happened to me,” he said. “I never thought about putting this or golf so much in my life, because it felt so good. It felt so different about how I was advancing that I knew I was going down the right path. ”
Morikawa remained enthusiastic, even though his statistic of having a stroke next week at Riviera was appalling – finally in the field.
“It’s like, ‘Are you worried about it? ‘”Said the old Morikawa, JJ Jakovac. “And I said, ‘Not at all. Your stroke has a big flow with it. It looks better to me like that. ‘”
Morikawa persisted, awakening confidence despite the lack of statistical evidence to support his new stroke. His numbers were not outside the consolation records this week at Consulate, either – but when paired with a sublime normal iron play, the play around was good enough for the case. best field of the year to date, with 47 of the top 50 players in the world.
With Sunday 3-under 69, Morikawa kept several opponents at bay and captured the World Cup Golf Championship with three hits over Brooks Koepka, Viktor Hovland and Billy Horschel. The 24-year-old joined Tiger Woods as the only under-25 players to win both the big event and the WGC event.
It’s not bad for a man who can’t say.
“If he starts putting putts in, yes, we never knew. The stats show that, ”said Jakovac. “If it rolls putts, it’s going to hit most people because it hits so well.”
On a steady path through both the amateur and professional levels, Morikawa felt an uncommon feeling after the PGA impact last fall: satisfaction. He simply became lazy. He missed more cuts in a five-start (three) race than he had in his first full year on Tour (one). Prior to the Masters, he relocated with his longtime coach Rick Sessinghaus and redesigned over the next two months.
“By the time this year started,” said Morikawa, “my game felt really good. ”
Statistics are important, but other players are often the best judge of talent. And they knew it was only a matter of time before Morikawa won again.
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“I’ve said for an extra year now, he’s the one everyone needs to watch,” said Horschel, who had a face-to-face chair at the Morikawa stripe show on Sunday. “It doesn’t hit 320 (yards), but if you can’t just hit it and put it on the track, that doesn’t give you any advantage. And he does a good job playing within himself.
“He’s a good iron player, but I don’t think people understand how good it is to be an iron player out here. Tiger (Woods) did that for years. Everyone talked about his speed, but he was the best iron player, the best wedge player for another ten years, and that was one of the reasons why he was so successful. ”
Morikawa did his best to honor Woods with a Tiger-like performance at The Concession, tuning the midfield putts early in the round to settle himself, then carving the bustle out of the competition with flawless golf coming home, bringing in a 12-foot par saver at No. 11 and then nifty up and down at 12 to push his lead to three hits.
For the week, Morikawa finished 10th in the field by scoring, receiving nearly four hits on the field – the second best week of his Tour career, behind just the PGA.
“His stroke looks amazing,” Horschel said.
So why isn’t this just another hot streak? Why does he feel confident that those weeks can be normal, don’t they?
“Now I feel confident that I can get the stroke out of play and I can just focus on distance, I can focus on the line, how do I get that ball? falling into the hole where I want it, ”Morikawa said. “That’s very interesting to me.”
And scary for the rest of the field.