PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Collin Morikawa has an inkling that Kurt Kitayama might want his putter back.

Morikawa has no plans to hand it over.

Yes, the wand that Morikawa used to win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, his first TOUR win since 2023, isn’t his. At least, it wasn’t. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

In fact, Morikawa had never rolled the putter until a few days before the WM Phoenix Open. While playing a round back home in Las Vegas the week before, Morikawa wasn’t putting well with his gamer, so he grabbed the putter from the bag of Kitayama’s brother, Daniel, who was borrowing it from Kurt, and gave it a roll.

Morikawa liked it, so he kept using it.

The story gets fuzzy from there, but Morikawa never gave it back. He took it that weekend and rolled putts in his hotel room and quickly the trial run ran the risk of becoming permanent. He didn’t see immediate results in Phoenix, nor was he particularly good with it during the first few rounds this week. But when he needed it most on Sunday, he found it.

“That's kind of how I stole it,” Morikawa said with a grin, the trophy sitting right next to him. “I don't know if he's going to want it back. He looked at it again this week. I think he's trying to replicate it with maybe a different club or whatever. But it's mine now.”

It’ll be hard to wrestle from his hands, particularly how he rolled it down the stretch. Morikawa holed a 30-footer for birdie on the 15th hole to take the outright lead Sunday and curled in a hard-breaking 8-footer for birdie on the 16th to get to 22 under. Then on the 18th, needing to get up-and-down from just off the green to win, Morikawa pulled putter – not a wedge – and calmly rolled his ball through a tuft of grass. It settled 16 inches from the hole, which he comfortably converted to return to the winner’s circle.

The putter is a shift in style from the blade he typically plays, though it’s not completely foreign. He used a mallet putter in the second half of last year, but not this specific model. This model, the Spider Tour X shape, is a middle ground between the Spider ZT he played at the Sony Open in Hawaii and the blade shape he played for most of his career.

Morikawa’s putting has been a sore point in his game for several years.

He’s never been great on the greens, and though he believes he can get there, he acknowledges it might always be a weak point. The difference in his putting now, compared to when he won two of his first seven major championship starts and rose to No. 2 in the world, is that he was no longer finding hot streaks that could propel him to top results.

Entering the week, Morikawa had just one positive week on the greens since the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday last May. That was at The Open Championship, where his ball-striking abandoned him and he missed the cut anyway. Morikawa had been in the red ever since.

Funnily enough, Morikawa didn’t gain strokes this week, though the margin was so thin, less than one-tenth of a shot, it’s negligible. Morikawa putted average for the week, and above-average on Sunday (gaining 1.6 strokes).

That’s all he needs when he strikes the ball the way he does. That was the second key to unlocking this win. Morikawa put together the best ball-striking round of his career on Saturday, gaining more than six strokes on the field. Not only was it his best, but it was also the best in tournament history and second-best since Shotlink began tracking strokes gained. Morikawa gained strokes again on Sunday and led the field tee-to-green for the week.

That confidence showed itself down the stretch. Facing a lengthy delay as Jacob Bridgeman made a mess of the 18th hole from the group ahead, Morikawa maintained his composure and striped a 3-wood down the middle of the fairway. Then, after another delay, Morikawa had the trust in his trajectory to start the ball well left of the green, nearly in the ocean, and cut it back toward the hole.

It’s the type of confidence that Morikawa has lacked in recent seasons, and he’s gone down rabbit hole after rabbit hole trying to find the fix to his iron play and his putting. As recently as this week, Morikawa was looking at old footage of himself, trying to find what that version of himself had. And it was notable given that on the previous hole, Morikawa pulled an iron and missed well left, nearly hitting it out of bounds.

“I saw no world where my ball was going to be left,” Morikawa said. “Like there's just zero, zero world. Just because like in times like that you know what shot you're going to hit.

I wasn't worried. But a very different shot (than 17)," he said. “This was a full 4-iron that I could hit. It wasn't going anywhere distance-wise, short of the green or over the pin. Like it was landing there in a lot of scenarios that I had kind of played out.”

It was the week Morikawa got his swagger back. With his irons and on the greens. He hopes it will springboard to multiple wins this year, perhaps even a major championship. And he plans to do it with this putter.

Sorry, Kurt.