This Was Collin Morikawa's Day Until, Inexplicably, It Wasn't
KAPALUA, Hawaii — Professional golf is one of the hardest sports to handicap and that proved out again on Sunday at the idyllic island of Maui, where Collin Morikawa gave up what most would call an insurmountable lead and lost.
Before you jump up and down and say that’s not right, a seven-shot lead over Jon Rahm was clearly not insurmountable, because Rahm shot a stellar 10-under 63 and won the tournament outright while Morikawa posted just a 1-under 72.
Think long and hard: Would you have put a bet on Rahm before the final round on a wild and woolly Plantation Course, where scoring happens at epic proportions and the leader hadn’t made a bogey?
In the real world, starting the day six up on three others and seven up on Rahm—who inexplicably was nine shots back when he bogeyed the first hole and Morikawa made an 18-footer to birdie the first—brings you to one conclusion early on, that it was Morikawa’s day.
Even at the turn, Morikawa had a six-shot lead. At what point would anyone in their right mind say Morikawa wasn’t going to win?
Start of Final Round | 7 shots |
After 1st hole | 9 shots |
After 6th hole | 7 shots |
After 9th hole | 6 shots |
After 12th hole | 5 shots |
After 13th hole | 4 shots |
After 14th hole | Players tied |
As soon as the two-time major winner thinned his wedge out of the greenside bunker on the 14th hole did Morikawa feel the tournament he had controlled for the 67 holes might be slipping away.
“When we were walking down 12, I saw that he made birdie, and I knew I was still I think three ahead at least at that point, I knew I still had chances and the game was feeling good,” Morikawa said of when he felt Rahm breathing down his neck. “But once I made the bogey on 14 and they were walking off 15 and didn't see the leaderboard until I got on the green and you realize I'm putting for par to stay tied for the lead—at that point it's a little different feeling than what you had early on.”
Up until the 14th on Sunday, Morikawa had not bogeyed a hole, but he would bogey three in a row to eventually fall out of the lead, a lead he should never have relinquished and one he would never see again.
So, the inevitable question becomes, did Morikawa lose it or did Rahm win it?
“A little bit of both, I mean 1 under on this course is not a good score, it really isn't,” Morikawa said. "He still shot 63, I still had it within reach if I don't make those bogeys and I make par, we're right there. So, he definitely made the birdies when he needed to. But I also made bogeys. When you're getting bogeys at that time of the tournament, they're costly. I definitely felt the weight of that.”
Bobby Cruikshank | 1928 Florida Open |
Gay Brewer | 1969 Danny Thomas Diplomat Classic |
Hal Sutton | 1983 Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic |
Greg Norman | 1996 Masters |
Sergio Garcia | 2005 Wells Fargo Championship |
Spencer Levin | 2012 WM Phoenix Open |
Dustin Johnson | 2017 WGC-HSBC Champions |
2022 Tour Championship | |
Collin Morikawa | 2023 Sentry Tournament of Champions |
Jordan Spieth knows how Morikawa is feeling after leaving a large lead on the cutting room floor.
In the 2016 Masters, Spieth had a five-shot lead going to the back-nine at Augusta National and then green-jacketed demons came out of the pines and Spieth gave the five shots up to Danny Willett.
He would come back weeks later to win at Colonial, but the sting stayed with him for some time.
“I've had leads that I've lost, and I've had a lot that I've kept,” Spieth said. “I would say that the most difficult part of the bigger leads and keeping 'em—and I've had big leads where I lose 'em during the round and get 'em back, is finding a way to play against the golf course or a certain goal for that day.”
Ironically, Morikawa birdied the 14th, 15th, 16th and 18th in Saturday’s third round in a performance that would have been enough to win Sunday, but instead the bogey stretch on some of those same holes earned him a disappointing runner-up finish and just pure sadness.
“It sucks, you work so hard, and you give yourself these opportunities and just bad timing on bad shots and kind of added up really quickly,” Morikawa said. “Don't know what I'm going to learn from this week, but it just didn't seem like it was that far off. It really wasn't.”