Collin Morikawa Has All It Takes to Become the Face of Golf’s Next Generation

Collin Morikawa has feel that can’t be taught, a head that never gets overwrought, and now, a trophy that can’t be bought. He won the PGA Championship in precisely the way we should want players to win majors: With incredible iron play, steady putting, heady course management, and two of the finest shots you will ever see under major-championship pressure.

The first shot came on 14 at TPC Harding Park. Morikawa had mishit his approach, leaving it short – “I had to step on a nine-iron and I just never got a hold of it.” He had a delicate pitch, without much green to work with; he landed it on the green with just the right amount of backspin, and it rolled into the hole for a birdie.

The next one was even better: The Par-4 16th, a delightful hole that is drive-able but fraught with trouble. Morikawa’s shot, playing partner Cameron Champ would say later, was so perfect that it looked like it came out of “a video game.” It landed exactly where he would have wanted it to land, the accuracy and distance control so preposterous that it didn’t seem real. 

“I heard some claps,” he said afterward. “Obviously not a ton. Claps could mean I’m on the green and I’ve got 50 feet.” He had seven. He drained the eagle putt, because he is Collin Morikawa, and we all ought to get used to this.

He is 23 and as for real as real gets. Casual fans might not have known much about Morikawa until this weekend, but if you watched him all year, you saw a very rare beast: A rookie with a stunningly complete array of skills and the poise to match. His ability to hit his irons rivals anybody on tour. Of all the names on the leaderboard Sunday — and there were a ton of names on that leaderboard — Morikawa was one of the two steadiest. (The other, a guy named Brooks Koepka, had a lousy afternoon.) This is not recency bias or post-win hype. It is who Morikawa is, and has been all year.

“Those guys who were paying attention, like myself, knew this was something special,” Paul Casey said Sunday.

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Of the recent collegians to jump into the deep end of golf’s pool, Morikawa is hard to notice at first. He does not bomb it like Cameron Champ or have the obvious swagger of Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff. But he is what they would all be happy to be in 10 years.

“Instant maturity was probably the one thing that stood out,” Casey said. “He didn’t necessarily get the most publicity out of the group he was in … you know when something is good. Collin is good. You can just tell. That’s where we were focusing our attention. And we weren’t wrong.”

Casey shot a 66 to finish 10-under. He said, “I had 12 (under) in the back of my mind all day. That wouldn’t have been enough, either.” Morikawa had similar thoughts – not so much about the number, but about going low.

“There was a party of us at 10 under,” Morikawa said. “Somebody was going to separate themselves.”

Morikawa separated himself from the rest, because he is different than the rest. Third-round leader Dustin Johnson is one of the best players of his era, but the first time he was in this position, at the 2010 U.S. Open, he shot a final-round 82. He has played well in many majors since then but often makes the one mistake that costs him. Bryson DeChambeau, the talk of the golf world this summer, is a monstrous driver of the ball but is not as well-suited as Morikawa to a course like Harding Park. It requires precision.

“He’s an unbelievable ball-striker, something that I envy,” DeChambeau said. “Hopefully I can get there one day.”

Morikawa has the quiet confidence of somebody who knows he can hit the right shot when it counts.

“I feel very comfortable in this spot,” he said. “When I woke up this morning I thought, this is where I’m meant to be.”

The world will change for him now. Expectations will change. He will have disappointments in majors, and stretches when he wonders if he will win again. But he also has the Wanamaker Trophy. He has the freedom of playing the rest of his career without anyone asking when he will win his first major. He has the knowledge of those two shots this weekend, one with a wedge and one with a driver, proof that he belongs, like he always knew he did.

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