Whicker: Collin Morikawa brings the noise at a quiet PGA, takes his first major title
When Collin Morikawa raised the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday, it literally flipped its lid.
Someone ran it down and repositioned it for Morikawa, who laughed through his embarrassment.
By then, he didn’t have to prove he could close.
Seven golfers were tied together on the back nine at Harding Park in San Francisco on Sunday, in a PGA Championship that proved that suspense can thrive in silence.
It was a wide cross-section of tour life, with Paul Casey playing his 64th major championship, with Dustin Johnson on the way to his 10th top-5 finish in a major, with Morikawa’s contemporaries like Scottie Scheffler, Matthew Wolff and Cameron Champ, all of whom were playing college golf maybe 10 minutes ago.
At one point there was a 7-way tie. The PGA was already planning to send them all out together as a gangsome for the 3-hole playoff.
With two career shots, Morikawa prevented that moment of awkwardness.
On the 14th hole he left a 9-iron short and needed to scramble. Instead he told himself, “I can make this,” and chipped in for birdie.
On the 16th hole, a short par-4, Morikawa brandished the driver. Only a few volunteers were on the green. After the shot to the 294-yard pin, he heard some random clapping and thought it only meant he’d reached the green. As he got closer he realized he was looking at a 7-foot eagle, a viral shot that disbanded the traffic jam..
“You hit a shot like that, you have to make that putt,” Morikawa said.
He did, going to 13-under, leading by three, and eventually winning by two strokes.
Morikawa became the fourth man to win the PGA before his 24th birthday. The others are Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. He became the first man, of any age, to shoot 129 (65-64) on Saturday and Sunday in a major..
He has now played 29 events and has three victories, one major win and still only one missed cut. At Muirfield Village he found himself in a playoff with Thomas, now the world’s No. 1 player, and watched Thomas drain a 50-footer birdie putt from a treacherous shelf and then yell, “Come on!,” which echoed throughout he premises.
Morikawa lined up his own 25-footer and holed that right on top of Thomas. Then he finished off that win, too.
He, Wolff, Viktor Hovland and the other millennials came on tour and saw no need for an incubation period. Who would have ever thought Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth would look somewhat middle-aged in 2020?
“I like the attention, I like the critiques,” said Morikawa, graduate of La Canada High and then Cal, with a business degree he earned in four years.
“But I don’t have expectations. They’re all goals. Expectations are what you put on me. I filter all of that out. I woke up this morning and said, ‘This is meant to be.’ And it doesn’t stop here.”
All week it seemed that the sluggers would take apart Harding Park like they were Home Run Derby contestants at L.A.’s old Wrigley Field. Only they could gouge shots out of the clinging rough, or hit shortish irons into the flat, puttable greens.
Of Sunday’s contenders, seven rank among the PGA Tour’s Top 20 in driving distance, including Bryson DeChambeau and Champ, the two top.
Morikawa is 110th. But his average drive fit No. 16 perfectly. “I don’t hit it 330,” he said.
He also led the tournament in strokes gained-putting, proximity to the hole and fairways hit.
He began with a 22-footer to save par on No. 1, and he never did make a bogey. That’s notable, considering the putter was the last weapon that Morikawa learned to control. He changed putters like you’d change playlists, but when caddie J.J. Jakovac corrected some alignment problems at Memphis last week, Morikawa went 67-66 on the weekend.
Meanwhile, Wolff went five-under-par in one four-hole stretch and wound up at 10-under-par. “It’s the best ball-striking week of my life,” said Wolff, after coach George Gankas told him to add a little bend to his knees.
“When I see Collin play well, I get pumped,” Wolff said. “We feed off each other. It’s cool to do this with him. We’ll be here a long time together.”
Casey, who had his most consistent Sunday performance in any major and still settled for second, could only smile.
“All you can do is tip your cap,” he said. “There’s always a new wave. But I’ve been around and I know talent when I see it. A few of us looked at all those kids and thought Collin would be the one who will be the most special.
“We weren’t wrong.”