AUGUSTA, Ga. — Golf history goes in one ear and out the other for Collin Morikawa. It’s not because he doesn’t care; it’s just not how he’s wired.
Exhibit A: 1998 Masters champion Mark O’Meara has become a good friend to Morikawa. During his Monday practice round at Augusta National Golf Club before the 2022 Masters, Morikawa’s caddie, J.J. Jakovac, asked if he wanted to recreate O’Meara’s winning putt on the 18th green.
“And I was like, ‘What putt?’ I had no clue which putt he had to win the Masters,” said Morikawa. “So, he drops the ball, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I thought you would have known.’ I was like, ‘No, I have zero clue.’”
Currently ranked No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking, the 25-year-old doesn’t concern himself with the history of others. He’s focused on his own.
“I just want to win. I want to be out here. I want to make history,” said Morikawa, who in just three years of professional golf has five PGA Tour wins and two major championships to his name. “I just love playing the game.”
Morikawa made the cut in his first 22 PGA Tour starts, second only to Tiger Woods (25). He’s the third-youngest PGA champion after winning at 23 years old and became the first to win two different major championships in his debut appearances after his 2021 Open Championship victory. In November he became the first American to win the Race to Dubai on the DP World Tour.
That early success has changed Morikawa’s expectations for himself. His standards have risen, self-admittedly a little too high at times, so much so that it winds up hurting rather than helping.
“You know, I feel like I should hit an 8-iron to 10 feet every single time, but you know, it just doesn’t happen,” said Morikawa. “There are times that that happens. But the biggest thing for me is just keep getting better. Like how do I keep figuring things out, learning small little things.”
“Keep getting better” could be the title for the story of his past two Masters appearances in 2020 and 2021, where his finishes improved from T-44 to T-18. The standard is high again this week, but the rising Tour star is taking a different approach to his third Masters.
“I need to play my game. You hear how much you need to hit draws, and you have to hit it high and you have to do certain things, but that’s what I did wrong the past two years,” said Morikawa. “This year was a little different. This year I just made sure everything was finely tuned and I go out there and figure out how to play the course to my strengths.”
Those strengths being his irons, his ability to control and trust his cut and finding the fairways.
“I’ve slowly worked my way out to where now I can just show up and feel comfortable on what tee shots I need to hit actual draws versus let’s hit it a little straight to a 5-yard cut,” he said.
Morikawa ended 2021 and began 2022 on a streak of five consecutive top-10 finishes, with the final three inside the top five. He then missed the cut at the Players Championship, shot 74-73 on the weekend to finish T-68 at the Valspar Championship before a T-9 in his most-recent start at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.
“From my perspective, yeah, the results haven’t been there, but we’re close and that’s what’s exciting,” said Morikawa. “I feel good, and you just keep moving on.”
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