Morikawa’s British Open win shows his ability to adapt.
Collin Morikawa had familiarity on his side at Harding Park. He played San Francisco’s venerable, treelined course several times during his college days at Cal, so he understood the challenges awaiting in last summer’s PGA Championship.
Not so much this time. Links golf can be a confounding swirl of bedeviling wind, crazy bounces, kneehigh hay. Many accomplished American players head to the British Open and suddenly feel as if they’re on another planet, completely out of their element.
Morikawa’s response the past four days, essentially: Hold my beer.
He played in his first Open Championship, with precious little track record in this entirely different style of golf — and won. Morikawa’s march to victory Sunday at Royal St. George’s was beyond impressive. He conquered Jordan Spieth, Louis Oosthuizen and all other challengers on his way to cradling the storied Claret Jug.
So at age 24, barely two years removed from his graduation in Berkeley (from the prestigious Haas School of Business), Morikawa counts as a twotime major champion. And that includes the game’s oldest championship, steeped in history and tradition.
Here’s history: Morikawa became only the second player since 1926 to win two majors in eight or fewer career starts. He joined a gentleman named Bobby Jones.
Morikawa’s method should offer hope to aspiring golfers who don’t fit the 21stcentury prototype. Think Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm or Brooks Koepka — big, strapping guys who smack the ball into distant galaxies and dig it out of the rough. They win with power.
Not Morikawa. He stands 5foot9, weighs 160 pounds and ranks 114th on the PGA Tour in driving distance. But he also stands 11th in driving accuracy and No. 1 — by a country mile — in shots gained/approach.
Put another way, he’s a historically good iron player. Hall of Famer and San Francisco native Johnny Miller once was the standard, routinely firing laserbeam approach shots close to the hole. Tiger Woods also belongs in the conversation, and now Morikawa is threatening to barge into the room.
And that’s on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Morikawa knew he lacked experience on links courses ahead of his maiden appearance in the Open Championship, so he entered last week’s Scottish Open as a tuneup. He didn’t play especially well — 15 shots behind winner Min Woo Lee, tied for 71st — but Morikawa got a taste of playing on foreign turf, with its funky lies and strange
angles and absence of trees.
Harding Park, of course, features rows of majestic cypress trees framing its fairways. Those are the same trees Miller and Ken Venturi learned to avoid while growing up on the course, developing games based more on accuracy than power.
Morikawa, not coincidentally, looked and felt right at home at Harding during the PGA in August. He surged out of a crowd of contenders, shooting 6564 on the weekend to earn his first major and announce his arrival on the world stage.
Fast forward 11 months, to the barren, wideopen landscape of Sandwich in southeast England, and Morikawa reminded the golf world he’s here to stay. He showed he can adapt to different challenges, a skill that takes some top players many years to acquire.
But Morikawa emitted the same vibe Sunday that he did last year at Harding — poised, unflappable, determined. He completed the front nine with three consecutive birdies to seize control. Then, as Spieth rallied on the back nine and Morikawa wobbled a bit, he recovered to make several crucial par saves. He made no bogeys in his finalround 66.
Morikawa’s rapid ascent is reminiscent of the way Spieth quickly soared to stardom. He won his first two majors in 2015, before he turned 22, and then added a third major (the Open Championship) weeks ahead of his 24th birthday.
For Morikawa, his summer highlight still awaits in some ways. He’s eagerly embracing his impending appearance in the Tokyo Olympics, an event magnified by his heritage. Morikawa grew up outside Los Angeles; his mom is Chinese and his dad is Japanese.
“It’s going to be one of the best things of my life,” Morikawa said last month of the Olympics. “To think back that I was an amateur two years ago, literally two years ago, and to be on this team and to be heading to Tokyo puts a smile on my face. I’m really excited.”
Now he’s even more excited, and deservedly so.
“To think back that I was an amateur two years ago, literally two years ago, and to be on this team and to be heading to Tokyo puts a smile on my face.” Collin Morikawa, on the Olympics