MORIKAWA TAKES MAJOR STEP IN YOUNG CAREER
California golfer’s sizzling finish wins PGA Championship as Koepka fades
TORONTO There hasn’t been one perfect thing about 2020.
That changed with Collin Morikawa’s tee shot at the par-4 16th hole on Sunday at the PGA Championship.
The 23-year-old Californian stood on the tee, 294 yards away from the hole, and drove his way into history, hitting one of the greatest drives ever, a soaring fade that bounced just short of the green, skirted the bunker and finished seven feet from eagle. Morikawa’s putt dropped and with it, so did all the other names on the most tightly-packed leaderboard in recent major history.
Morikawa shot a bogey-free 64 on Sunday at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco to finish at 13-under and win the first major of 2020, and the first of his career.
“It just fit my eye, we were just hoping for a really good bounce, and we got it,” Morikawa said during the trophy ceremony of his tee shot on the 16th.
“I hit a really good putt, and now we’re here.”
The eagle gave Morikawa a two-shot lead over Englishman Paul Casey, who just moments earlier had tied the young American for the lead. Casey finished in a tie for second with 54-hole leader Dustin Johnson at 11-under. It was a wild finish to a wild Sunday that saw seven players tied for the lead on the back nine. If there were fans allowed at Harding Park, they wouldn’t have known where to look as the roars would have been coming from everywhere.
Instead, the quietest golf course a major championship has ever seen delivered one of the loudest finishes.
But that’s 2020.
A year the entire world is hoping to forget will be oddly remembered as the year that golf flourished, offering an outdoor escape after months of being trapped indoors.
The most solitary of sports suddenly was the only place you could go to safely see friends and even have a drink. Was it normal? No. But we needed it.
On Sunday, golf put an exclamation mark on its successful COVID-19 restart by getting its first major championship in the books with the only drama taking place between the ropes.
Morikawa has cemented himself as the leading man in the heralded class of 2019 PGA Tour rookies that includes Matthew Wolff and Victor Hovland.
All three young stars have already won on tour, but with Sunday’s win Morikawa now has three victories in his first 27 professional starts, including a major championship. And he’s only missed one cut.
Wolff made a run of his own in the final round, shooting a 5-under 65 to finish at 10-under in a tie for fourth along with Jason Day, Tony Finau, Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler.
Wolff and Hovland were teammates at Oklahoma State before making the jump to the PGA Tour last year.
“It’s just the competitiveness between each other is what makes us so successful out here,” Wolff said after his round.
“I know that we’ve battled it out and I can beat him, he can beat me.”
Morikawa grew up in California and began playing golf at five years old, attending La Canada High School before playing his college golf at the University of California in Berkeley. During his time there, he had the opportunity to play Harding Park.
“Being able to see the course about a dozen times helped, but you wished it helped a little more, but I still had to read the greens, I still had to come out here and be prepared to play, but I guess it helped enough,” Morikawa said.
“I felt very comfortable from the start, as an amateur, junior golfer, turning professional last year, but to finally close it off and come out here in San Francisco, pretty much my second home where I spent the last four years is pretty special.”
The most unlikely plot twist on Sunday was the collapse of reigning back-to-back PGA champion Brooks Koepka, who began the day two shots back of the lead but shot a 4-over 74 and finished at 3-under in a tie for 29th.
“Hey, wasn’t meant to be,” Koepka said. “Three in a row, you’re not really supposed to do two in a row looking at history, but that’s all right. Got two more (majors) the rest of the season and we’ll figure it out from there.”
Tiger Woods finished off a disappointing major with a 3-under 67 to finish in a tie for 37th at 1-under.
Two Canadians made the cut this week, but both of them went the wrong way on the leaderboard on Sunday.
Adam Hadwin of Abbotsford, B.C., began the day at 1-under in a tie for 34th but shot a 3-over 73 in the final round to drop 24 spots and finished in a tie for 58th at 2-over par for the week.
Mackenzie Hughes of Dundas, Ont., also finished the week at 2-over after shooting a 2-over 72 on Sunday.
Nick Taylor of Abbotsford and Corey Conners of Listowel, Ont., missed the cut.
On Sunday, three weeks after the 2020 majors were supposed to have wrapped up in Sandwich, England, the first big trophy of the year was handed out. Was it normal?
No. But we needed it.