By Daniel Rapaport
SANDWICH, England — Collin Morikawa captured his first major with a chip-in and an all-time drive. He earned his reputation as golf’s premier ball-striker with a metronomic iron swing. He’d really be something, the thinking went, if he could just find common ground with the putter. The all-time greats find the bottom when they need it most.

On Sunday at Royal St. George’s, Morikawa stood over a 20-footer on the 14th green that he needed, for the entire golf world was shaking around him. Jordan Spieth had rediscovered his Birkdale gear and played his last eight in a dizzying six under. A voracious Jon Rahm, overflowing with confidence but running short on holes, had a kick-in left at 16 for his fourth birdie in a row. Louis Oosthuizen finally showed signs of life, nearly jarring his third into the same par 5. Morikawa’s cozy four-shot lead had dwindled to one in a jiff, and a meek chip had expired before climbing a ridge guarding the flag. He risked letting the tournament’s last par 5 come and go without a birdie.

He placed his left hand on his wand, draped the grip between his right thumb and forefinger—the “saw” grip he switched to in February, out of sheer necessity—and poured in the one final birdie to clinch the Open Championship. A final-round, bogey-free 66 and 15-under 265 total delivered a two-shot victory over Spieth, with Rahm and Oosthuizen two further back in a tie for third.

The scoreboard every golfer dreams of being on ?

Well played Collin, The 150th Open awaits your return

#TheOpen pic.twitter.com/pNL9FyyB3Z

— The Open (@TheOpen) July 18, 2021

The only buzzkill here: Morikawa’s now out of majors to win in his first try. He catapulted to stardom 11 months ago in chilly, fan-less San Francisco, winning the PGA in impressive comeback fashion. On Sunday, the 24-year-old from Los Angeles became the first player ever to win two of the four in his debut—and did in front of a (nearly) full house, on a sun-soaked afternoon that looked more Southern California than Southern England.

“At 24 years old, it’s so hard to look back at the two short years that I have been a pro and see what I’ve done because I want more,” said the Champion Golfer of the Year, the claret jug by his side. “I enjoy these moments and I love it, and I want to teach myself to embrace it a little more, maybe spend a few extra days and sit back and drink out of this. But I want to—yeah, I just want more.”

Accomplishing anything that Tiger or Jack or Bobby never managed to is remarkable on its own; it’s especially so considering how his Open began. Last week’s Scottish Open marked Morikawa’s first foray into links golf. He’s not much of a golf nerd, never begged his parents for a trip to St. Andrews, and so he’d have to cram in Links 101 a week before the year’s final major. It was quite the education. He hated the way his irons traveled through the firm Scottish turf and couldn’t the center of the face all week at The Renaissance Club.

“I was hitting these iron shots last week that I normally don’t,” he said Friday. Here was the best player on the PGA Tour—his lead over No. 2 in strokes gained/approach, Paul Casey, is larger than Casey’s lead over No. 55, Jason Kokrak—struggling to find his fastball. What’s more, he couldn’t get a damn putt to the hole. That recipe produced a yucky T-71 finish. These were not-small issues that needed addressing, and he’d have to do so without any team members in sight.

The modern tour pro insulates himself behind the agent, the swing guru, the mental coach. The objective is to control as many variables as possible, to keep the machine churning without incident. Change, especially during a major week, is the enemy.

Morikawa is modern by any reasonable definition—born after Tiger turned pro, Gen Z, texted his girlfriend before they met in person. Yet he categorically rejects the notion that generational talent qualifies him for any sort of coddling. In an age of increasingly sheltered tour pros, he is refreshingly self-sufficient. He got to work, searching calmly but firmly for a solution.

“He has the ability to remain curious,” says his coach of 20 years, Rick Sessinghaus, from his couch in California. “He stays calm and present. He has a mastery mindset—always learning, very self-aware and willing to do the little things.”

We’re not sure if switching irons and putting grips on the eve of a major qualifies as little, but the point stands. A willingness to adapt. Morikawa switched out his blades in the 7-, 8- and 9-iron for a more forgiving model. On the putting front, with a nudge from caddie J.J. Jakovac, he decided to go with a conventional grip on long-range putts to get some extra hit. Jakovac, who won two D-II individual national championships back in his playing days—and celebrated his 39th birthday Sunday—is now two-for-two in putting tips. The week before the PGA, he suggested Morikawa put a little more weight on his left side at address. His boss led the field in putting that week and won his first major. The Open lags behind in the advanced-stats department, but the ol’ eye test says the putter keyed the victory. Especially on Sunday.

Morikawa began the afternoon one shot behind Louis Oosthuizen, the perpetual runner-up who appealed to the crowd’s romantic instincts. The two traded pars through the first two holes, with Oosthuizen cosying a fairway wood up to kick-in range for a nerve-settling up-and-down. On the tee at the par-3 third, Morikawa asked Jakovac if he liked starting 4-iron directly at the flag. “I like starting it a half-step left of it. If you land this 221, 222, it gets there.”

There was no guess-work involved. Morikawa glided around this seaside links with utter conviction. He darted off the tees immediately after Oosthuizen made contact and played his brand of no-nonsense golf until Louis blinked first, bogeying the fourth with five tentative shots. The South African’s uneasiness persisted all afternoon—after opening with 64-65, he played the weekend in even par to let yet another major slip through the cracks. He declined to speak with reporters after the round, gutted to his core. The juxtaposition in the two men’s comportment brought to mind a poignant observation from another major winner.

“People often ask in a general term about ‘experience,’ ” Padraig Harrington said at May’s Irish Open. “Well, as you gain experience you lose innocence. I suppose if you drew a graph, there’s a crossing point of equilibrium where you have some experience and a certain amount of innocence and enthusiasm.”

Chris Trotman

Morikawa is basking at the dead-centre of that equilibrium. He entered this week with four PGA Tour victories but also just-enough scar tissue, having missed a three-footer to lose a playoff at Colonial last year and finishing second in another mano-y-mano at the Memorial last month. He never quite wrestled control of either of those events the way he did Sunday.

A comfortable birdie at the par-5 seventh coincided with a messy bogey from Oosthuizen. The lead was two. He nearly jarred his 195-yard approach at the eighth. The lead was three. A 20-footer found the bottom at nine. The lead was four. No major championship round is complete without its spots of bother, and Morikawa ran into his first one at 10, blocking his tee shot into the gorse and blocking his approach into the gorse. He played safely to 15 feet and jarred yet another. You got the sense that Collin making putts was like peak Tiger finding fairways: If he’s doing that, it’s over.

“Definitely one of the best [putting] weeks I’ve had, especially inside 10 feet. I felt like it was as solid as it’s going to get. I don’t think I really missed many from that distance. Especially in a major. I think in a major on a Sunday in contention, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than making a putt. I’m going to tell myself probably tomorrow, ‘Why can’t I keep doing that all the time?’ But I’m going to try to figure out what worked today and use that for the future because I know I can putt well. I know I can putt well in these pressure situations. I’ve just got to keep doing that.”

As the putts kept falling, Spieth manufactured a spirited run out of thin air. The resurgent Texan looked genuinely disheveled after missing short par putts on 17 and 18 on Saturday and took his putter home with him that evening for last-minute, post-sunset practice. Hardly an encouraging sign, and the sloppiness bled into Sunday’s opening holes. A two-way miss had him two over through six, only to eagle the par-5 seventh and birdie 9, 10, 13 and a final one at 14. He matched Morikawa’s 66, but the late bricks on Saturday proved fatal.

“My putting is not where I want to be at all,” Spieth said. “It’s progressing the right direction, but it’s not where it has been. And I know what needs to do to get there, and it’s just very difficult to do. But it’s rounds like today or this week, major championship rounds, where you have to obviously test not only your touch out here, but also a lot of knobs and breaking putts and trust lines. It’s a good test for it. I just wasn’t extremely sharp with the putter this week.”

Andrew Redington

The pace of the final round suddenly hastened to breakneck territory, with world-class players flagging approaches left and right. And yet there was Morikawa, calm as ever on the 14th green, holing that 20-footer for some precious breathing room. The last four holes were not without stress; he yanked his approach long-left on 15, only to play safely to 12 feet and—you guessed it—holed the par effort. Solid pars at 16 and 17, and a splitsville tee shot on 18 ensured the type of stroll golf dreams are made of.

“To have this many people here, these are the moments you remember on TV,” Morikawa said. “People tapping in for par, birdieing, whatever it may be, to win a tournament. To win a major. Those are the moments, the few seconds that you embrace so much. You look around, every seat is packed, everywhere is packed with people. That’s just what’s going through my head of just enjoying those moments.”

Winning one major is impressive, life-changing, all that. But plenty of guys have won one major. The second vaults you in a different category. Having two before your 25th birthday, and you’ve got a major count going. Only a few players per generation ever reach major-count territory at early. Tiger was one. Jordan another. After conquering the game’s oldest test in his first go, Collin is there, too.

The post Why Collin Morikawa’s second major should scare his competition appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Huggan
SANDWICH, England—The signs were there early and kept on coming. The final round of the 149th Open Championship was never destined to end with Louis Oosthuizen as “the champion golfer of the year.” Ahead by one shot standing on the first tee, the 38-year old South African lapsed into the sort of soporific mood that has too often characterized his play on Sunday in major championships. This eventual tie for third place alongside U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm was Oosthuizen’s 10th top-10 finish—and his eighth in the top-three—since he made off with the claret jug at St. Andrews 11 years ago.

It is a record that would surely provoke pride in the vast majority of players, even amidst the inevitable disappointments. But the signs were there earlier in the week that the farmer boy from Mussell Bay near Cape Town was growing tired of the “Why haven’t you won a second major?” narrative. His naturally quiet charm never quite ebbed away, but there were hints of mild irritation if you looked closely. There was a little bit of eye-rolling and one or two whispered sighs before he responded to questions.

So it was that, after shaking the hand of Collin Morikawa on the 18th green and signing the card that showed his closing one-over par 71 was at least four-shots too many, Oosthuizen beat a hasty retreat from Royal St. George’s without uttering one more word publicly. There was only, maybe 90 minutes later, a brief message on Twitter:

Well I do know one thing, the fans at @TheOpen are second (or third) to none. Thank you for the incredible support this week, and congrats to @collin_morikawa who played with class and grit today. Well done mate ?? #TheOpen pic.twitter.com/BZdhY8xFG8

— Louis Oosthuizen (@Louis57TM) July 18, 2021

It was just the sort of message one would expect from such a classy competitor, one blessed with maybe the most admired full swing in professional golf. Although that unofficial title now has some competition from the new Open champion.

Anyway, Oosthuizen’s overnight advantage lasted only until the fourth, where the first of his three bogeys drop him into a tie with Morikawa on 11-under par. Another lapse at the par-5 7th, where he ‘thinned’ his third shot from one greenside bunker into another en route to a bogey six, saw the 2010 Open champion lose the lead for good. By the turn he was four shots behind and destined to finish that way despite birdies at the short 11th and the long 14th.

Clearly, there wasn’t much about this round that could possibly console a man who has now come close without winning in three consecutive major championships. But Morikawa gave it his best shot with some kind words for the man with whom he had shared the last two rounds.

“These are the first few times I played with Louis,” said the now two-time major champion. “He is an outright amazing player and person. I hope I get more pairings with him because he’s just a great guy to play with. It’s nice to see another guy just stripe it down the middle. I mean, when I watch him play and hit his drives, I’m like, ‘Wow,’ I want to hit it like that.

“Yeah, Louis is consistent, he really is. He’s going to keep knocking at these doors, and I’m sure he’s going to knock a few more down. He’s just too good. He just had an unlucky break on seven. We were in the middle of the fairway and he makes bogey, and just had a couple other bogeys. Louis is a great guy, an amazing person, and I was very lucky to have the pairing with him the final two days.”

Oosthuizen’s feelings on that subject—and others—are for another day. Stay tuned, though. As Morikawa said, he’s too good for this latest disappointment to be the end of him as far as majors are concerned.

The post Another disappointment for Louis Oosthuizen, and this time the strain shows appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
As is the case after every major, the #stats and #numbers are pouring in at a fast-and-furious pace. Even more so after this 149th Open Championship won by Collin Morikawa, who continues to rewrite the record books with this remarkable start to his career.

So, where do we even begin? First, we should mention that Morikawa did not make a bogey over his final 31 holes, the third-longest bogey-free streak to finish a tournament by a major winner. It was an eerily similar door-slamming to his 2020 PGA Championship victory at TPC Harding Park, where he went bogey-free on his final 23 holes.

Both times, he had to come from behind to win, trailing by two at the PGA heading into Sunday and trailing by one at Royal St. George’s. And yet, both times, by the end of Sunday it felt like he was the one in control the entire time, flashing a Tiger Woods-like ability to make the pack come get him. Strangely enough, he did join Woods in this elite club with his win Sunday:

Only two players in men’s golf history have won The Open Championship and the PGA Championship before turning 25:

? Collin Morikawa
? Tiger Woods pic.twitter.com/rhU0VMijeu

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 18, 2021

The Tiger comparisons don’t end there, either. The win puts him in another exclusive club of players to pick up two majors before the age of 25 since 1934. The club includes Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Seve Ballesteros.

He also draws Woods comparisons with his elite iron play and clutch putting, in addition to seeming wise beyond his years. Prior to the tournament, Morikawa told Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis that he wasn’t at Royal St. George’s to “experience the Open.” “I show up to tournaments, I show up to venues—this is a little different, a little far from home—but the belief is still there. End goal is obviously to win.” Sound like anybody else we know?

Like Woods, he’s also already winning at an insane clip, perhaps at an even more insane clip than Woods did early in his career:

.@collin_morikawa‘s winning percentages broken down:

In college: 5 of 48 (10%)

On the PGA Tour: 5 of 49 (10%)

In MAJORS: 2 of 8 (25%)

What a stud.

— Alex Myers (@AlexMyers3) July 18, 2021

The only other man to win two majors in his first eight starts? Bobby Jones, per golf stats guru Justin Ray. It took Woods 18 majors to get two, though six of those were when he was still an amateur.

And yet, all these feats could wind up paling in comparison to another pointed out by Ray on Sunday afternoon, one that literally puts Morikawa in his own class. With his Open win, he is now the first player to win two different major championship debuts:

Congratulations to #TheOpen champion, Collin Morikawa pic.twitter.com/fYZ8Ihhve6

— Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) July 18, 2021

That is, to put it simply, utterly insane, the type of feat that could prove to be unequalled in golf history. Twenty or 30 years from now, that could end up in one of those “unbreakable golf records” discussions, barring the emergence of another 24-year-old-going-on-40 type guy who wins a pair of major debuts. It goes against all conventional thinking if a player needing experience in the four big ones before he’s allowed to bag one, or two, in Collin’s case.

The post There is a very good chance this Collin Morikawa feat will never be equalled appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The concept was to measure Morikawa’s accuracy compared to that of other tour players. On its own, not a big deal. Except here we wanted to see if Morikawa’s 6-iron was more precise than a tour player’s pitching wedge. In a sense, it’d be like giving someone a crayon and someone else a can of spray paint and asking both to stay within the same lines of a coloring book. Yet when we posed the idea to Morikawa at our cover shoot outside New York City the day after the 2020 U.S. Open, he mostly just asked when we needed him to start.

Here’s the video:

To summarise, a PGA Tour player on average hits his pitching wedge to within 23 feet. In 12 swings with a 6-iron, Morikawa averaged 11.3 feet. Perhaps even more revealing from the video is how many times Morikawa reacted to a swing as if he hit it off the planet—”Nope,” he’d say—and the ball landed a mere 10 feet or so away. Fair to say the guy grades himself on a different curve. Justifiably so.

The post We put Collin Morikawa’s iron accuracy to the test, and the results were freakish appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
This time last year Collin Morikawa had played in just one major in his career. He now has two major titles.

Morikawa was surgical on Sunday at Royal St. George’s, taking the venerable links apart piece by piece, and for that precision Morikawa is the winner of the 149th Open Championship.

Beginning his day one back of 54-hole leader Louis Oosthuizen, Morikawa traversed Royal St. George’s treacherous opening five holes in even par then made his move, racking up three straight birdies to end his first nine thanks to a lights-out iron display. The few times Morikawa was off with his second shots, his short game—usually the weakest weapon in his arsenal—kept him afloat, making sensible outs from the rough and converting a number of clutch par saves. A 15-footer birdie putt over a ridge at the par-5 14th essentially sealed the claret jug for the 24-year-old superstar.

Bogey-free perfection from the Champion Golfer of the Year ? #TheOpen pic.twitter.com/pcaoTHqwUP

— The Open (@TheOpen) July 18, 2021

Jordan Spieth, whose Saturday stumble on the back nine bestowed a three-shot deficit entering the day, dug himself into a deeper hole at the onset of Sunday, playing the first six holes two over to seemingly take himself out of the proceedings. But Spieth answered, and answered with vigor, with an eagle at the par-3 seventh, and followed with four birdies in a six-hole stretch starting at the ninth.

Alas, Spieth’s birdie tries down the closing stretch failed to materialize, and with Morikawa failing to surrender an inch, Spieth’s effort—a four-under 66—ultimately came two shots short.

Oosthuizen, who entered off consecutive runner-ups at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open, made a bogey at the fourth and proceeded to make a mess of the par-5 seventh. His second shot was short into the right greenside bunker, and Oosthuizen proceeded to airmail his third across the green against the backlip of another bunker. He managed to chop his fourth onto the green and made a nice two-putt from there, but a bogey proved to be a two-shot swing with Morikawa. He made the turn in two over compared to Morikawa’s three-under front, and a near ace at the par-3 11th was wiped out by a bogey at the par-4 13th, resulting in another near major miss for the 2010 Open champ.

The post Collin Morikawa wins the 149th Open Championship appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Editor’s Note: This cover story appeared in a recent issue of Golf Digest Middle East, before Collin Morikawa won the 2021 Open Championship.

No two golfing journeys are identical. But if there is a common theme, it’s turbulence. Golf drags you on a rollercoaster ride—you fall in love with the game and then fall out of it. You make a breakthrough and then hit a wall. The exhilarating successes are sandwiched by humbling failures.

This is true even for the best players in the world. Of course, their ebbs and flows are on a different scale, and their general trajectory is upward. Still, even the superstars have had their struggles. Brooks Koepka wasn’t good enough to get a scholarship offer from his beloved Florida Gators. Phil Mickelson couldn’t get over the major-championship hump until he was 33. Jordan Spieth stormed onto the scene a conquering hero and then dropped out of the top 75 in the World Golf Ranking.

That’s what makes Collin Morikawa’s rise so remarkable—the linearity of it all. It’s uninterrupted. There is, simply put, a whole lot of good and shockingly little bad: a comfortable upbringing in Southern California, an outstanding junior golf career that gave him his choice of colleges, a world No. 1 amateur ranking, a degree from one of the best undergraduate business schools in the world, a tour card less than two months after turning pro, an enriching relationship with a beautiful woman, three PGA Tour victories, millions of dollars, a major championship—all before his 24th birthday.

Morikawa will tell you he is anything but satisfied. That despite how it might appear, he does not have everything figured out. There is, however, ample evidence to the contrary.

‘I’VE BEEN VERY LUCKY’

Debbie and Blaine Morikawa co-own a commercial laundry business near downtown Los Angeles that delivers linens, tablecloths and the like to restaurants throughout L.A. It has been in the family for quite a while. Nothing crazy lucrative, but more than enough to provide Collin and his younger brother, Garrett, who is 17 and prefers soccer over golf, a worry-free childhood in La Cañada Flintridge, a small upscale enclave just north of Pasadena.

“I’ve been very lucky,” says Collin, who now lives in Las Vegas—on his own but not too far away from home. He misses L.A., of course, but “you know, taxes.” He thinks about money these days, in the good way—because he has a lot of it. He didn’t when he was younger.

“We never had to think about money growing up,” he says, “never had to think about what we were having for dinner. I wasn’t a kid that wanted many things; I never asked for a lot. But if I did need something or I did want something, I was very lucky to have parents who were able to afford stuff like that.”

His family traveled frequently, often to Hawaii, where his fraternal grandparents still live and where he attributes his love affair with the ocean. They would go skiing. They had a membership to Chevy Chase Country Club, a private nine-hole layout in nearby Glendale. But it was at a public course where young Collin’s golf talent began to shine: Scholl Canyon, a 3,039-yard, par-60 track where an instructor named Rick Sessinghaus worked.

When Morikawa was 5, his parents convinced the organizers of a junior golf camp at Scholl to let their son participate. He wasn’t technically old enough, but the bones of his remarkably repeatable golf swing were already in place.

“Rick was the guy at the end of the range who taught the better players,” Morikawa says. “He was the end goal, the guy you wanted as a coach. So after I went through the camp, slowly getting more interested in the game, my parents could see I was getting better. So they approached Rick to see if he would coach me, and by the time I was 8, we had started this relationship.”

That relationship continues to this day. Sessinghaus isn’t your typical swing guru with a stable of professional players. Morikawa is his only student on the PGA Tour, so Sessinghaus has no need to hide his rooting interest. In other words, he cheers. Loudly. And during the fan-less reality of pandemic golf in 2020, he was often the only one. “We fist-bump for birdies,” Sessinghaus says with a smile. We refers to anyone near him, including this writer, who can confirm the policy. “For eagles, I might knock your hand off,” he says.

Of course, Sessinghaus knows the golf swing—particularly Collin’s, which he has molded for 15-plus years. But Sessinghaus also owns a doctorate in applied sports psychology and penned a book called Golf: The Ultimate Mind Game. Not surprisingly, he preaches a holistic method for improvement—he and Morikawa talk often about a “growth mind-set”—and speaks about his relationship with his star pupil as a father gushes about his son.

Their work has never been the typical instructor-stands-behind-the-player-on-the-practice-tee situation. Instead of having a young Morikawa mindlessly hit balls on the driving range, Sessinghaus preferred to simulate situations on the golf course.

“We’d drop balls around the course, and I’d have him play three types of shots,” Sessinghaus says. “On the first, I’d let him do his thing. Then we’d talk about why he chose that shot, what he was trying to do, and he’d make his own adjustments for No. 2. Then I’d give him some technical advice on how to play the correct shot for the situation, and he’d try that shot for the third.”

Sessinghaus’ goal has never changed: He wants Collin to be a player, not a hitter, to think about variables and understand his mistakes. Was that a bad swing or a bad decision? Both coach and student credit this philosophy with helping make Morikawa the measured player he is today. You won’t catch Morikawa posting launch-monitor readings to Instagram, and he doesn’t so much rely on adjusted yardages as he does on feel, artistry and athleticism. What Sessinghaus and Morikawa work on has remained consistent since Morikawa was a child: low-tech drills such as hitting flat-footed punch shots and simple methods like varying how high the hands finish to determine shot shape.

Morikawa progressed rapidly. He quit playing other sports around age 10. Baseball was the hardest goodbye. “It’s not like I didn’t want to play other sports,” he says. “I just felt like if I wanted to do this, this is what I had to do.” Eye-popping self-knowledge for a pre-teen. “It was my decision, as a little kid,” he says. “It’s crazy to think about it, but it’s what I loved.”

During the next few years, Sessinghaus grew increasingly certain he had something special.

“I remember this conversation with my wife when I came home after a day working with Collin,” he says. “I told her, ‘He has it. He has that special thing. He’s going to be a professional.’ He was 12 years old at the time.”

A FATEFUL DECISION IN COLLEGE

When it came time to choose a college, Morikawa had options. An accomplished junior with a sparkling report card, he was every college coach’s dream. “I was able to really look at the entire country and say, OK, this is where I want to go,” he says. “My mom went to USC, so I grew up a Trojan fan. The Pac-12 was always in my blood. I always viewed the Pac-12 as the best.”

In the end, he narrowed his options to four California schools: Stanford, UCLA, USC and Cal-Berkeley. He chose Berkeley and wasted little time establishing himself as the alpha of the program, finishing as Cal’s top player in seven of his 14 events as a freshman in 2015-’16. But he didn’t win a tournament that season, and not until that summer did he truly emerge as one of the best players in the country.

In June 2016 he won the prestigious Sunnehanna Amateur with a final-round 62. The next week he teed it up in the Capital Classic, a tournament on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour, which he qualified for by winning the Trans-Mississippi Amateur the year before. It was his first time playing in a professional tournament, so he felt perfectly content to make the cut on the number. Then he closed with two sizzling 63s and drained a 27-footer for birdie on the 72nd hole to get into a three-way playoff.

Ollie Schniederjans ended up winning, but from the outside, it seemed Morikawa had a difficult choice to make: Stay in school or turn pro. Clearly, his game was ready. But he knew he wasn’t prepared at 19 for the solitary life of a professional golfer.

“I don’t think I would have turned pro, even if I won,” he says. “I definitely would have brought it up to my parents, and I would have thought about it. Yes, maybe my golf game was ready, but I wasn’t ready to live that life by myself. People have said I’ve been very mature and, yes, I probably could have lived on my own. But I didn’t go to a school like Cal to play one year, have some good results and leave. Just wasn’t my mind-set.”

Eric Mina was an assistant during Morikawa’s last three years at Cal and remembers meeting him at the first team practice of Morikawa’s sophomore year at Blackhawk Country Club. Mina had been an All-American at Cal and did the mini-tour grind for a few years before returning to the program. He knew what a professional golfer looked like—an awful lot like a teenage Collin Morikawa.

“What caught my eye was his ability to maneuver the golf ball, to really control it,” Mina says. “Whether it was a half shot or a full shot, he knew his yardages. He really knew them. You don’t see that with a lot of pro golfers, so for a 19-year-old kid to have that—extremely impressive.”

Now, there’s staying in school and then there’s staying in school. It’s not exactly a secret that the best college athletes often pick—how should we say this?—manageable majors and classes. If they don’t leave early, as Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth did, then the goal is to stay academically eligible without racking up a particularly stressful workload.

Morikawa missed the memo. During the fall of his sophomore year, just as his golf had begun to take off, he applied to the Haas Business School, the No. 3 undergraduate business program in America, according to U.S. News & World Report. He received his acceptance letter while at a golf tournament in Hawaii, naturally.

“I think the biggest thing that helped us out as far as keeping him in school,” Mina says, “was him getting into Haas. If he didn’t get in, it might have been appealing for him to leave.”

But what use does a professional golfer have for a business degree?

“A bunch of people are coming out of Haas and running their own startups or going into a large business or company,” Morikawa says. “They’re getting great jobs. Me, I’m getting a great job and running my own brand, running who I am as a golfer. I might not necessarily be doing everything, but I understand everything that’s going on.

“I don’t know that everyone out there on the PGA Tour really has a full understanding of everything that’s going on behind them. I’m very aware of that, of what’s going on in the background. Other people, they couldn’t care less. They just want someone to do it for them. But I want to be involved; I want to learn about it.”

Also during his sophomore year Morikawa met Katherine Zhu, a player on the Pepperdine women’s golf team. Morikawa and Zhu shared a mutual friend on the Cal women’s team, and their story of coming together is distinctly modern: The friend showed Morikawa pictures on Zhu’s Instagram page. Morikawa liked what he saw, and the two began texting, eventually meeting over spring break. They have been together since.

“She’s helped me so much,” Morikawa says, quick to point out that he didn’t begin winning tournaments in bunches until she came into his life. “Especially out on tour, it’s a very lonely life. Everyone will tell you, at parts of their career, they’ve been lonely. Having her travel with me, we’ve been able to explore new cities, have good dinners. I’ve just been able to relax, not to stress about the next day so much. I think that’s how some of the best players out there that have families, kids traveling with them are able to flip the switch. On the golf course, it’s golf; it’s business. Off the course, they don’t tire themselves out. Without her, I’d be so focused on golf 24-7, getting antsy about the next round, stuff like that. You can never do that.”

He got into business school, he got the girl, then he started winning. During his last three years at Cal, he won five times and lost in a playoff twice. His junior year, he set a new NCAA scoring record with an average of 68.68 and finished the year as the No. 1 player in the nation. As a senior, he won the Pac-12 individual title and had 11 top 10s in 12 starts.

But perhaps his most impressive feat in college, the true harbinger of his rapid success as a professional, did not come in a tournament at all. It came on a practice range. While he was at Cal, he took a dispersion test on a launch monitor. “They said my shot dispersion with a 6-iron was about the same as the average tour pro’s with a pitching wedge,” he told Golf Digest in 2019. “I guess that’s a humble brag.”

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