Collin Morikawa, Adam Hadwin fall short in title bid at Rocket Mortgage Classic
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Collin Morikawa, Adam Hadwin feel the sting of playoff loss in Detroit.
DETROIT - Golf is a game of inches. Collin Morikawa was reminded of that fact rather brutally Sunday.
Standing in the 18th fairway on the opening hole of a playoff with Rickie Fowler and Adam Hadwin, Morikawa thought he hit the shot that would end his two-year winless drought. The shot that would vindicate a lackluster season that started with a blown opportunity at the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January.
A perfect 9-iron, he called it. One that would land pin high and stop perfectly. He even started walking after it.
The result, then? Devastating. The shot landed just in the rough past the back-right hole location and stayed there. Morikawa’s chip for birdie came up short – and Fowler drained a 12-foot putt that ended the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Rickie Fowler birdies the first playoff hole to win Rocket Mortgage
“After I hit it, I felt max it'd be landing 2 (yards), 3 past. Landed 5 past, 2 yards too far,” said Morikawa, who shot a bogey-free 64 on Sunday at Detroit Golf Club just to make the playoff.
The margins in professional golf are thin. When you are in search of your first win since the 2021 Open Championship, like Morikawa, they feel even smaller.
Morikawa thought he won the tournament on the final hole of regulation. Two groups ahead of Hadwin and Fowler, Morikawa stood over a 16-foot birdie putt that would have pushed him to 25 under. That, too, missed by inches, burning the right edge of the cup.
“Sometimes it’s just not meant (to be),” he said.
It’s felt that way often for Morikawa this year. He seemed destined to win the first event of 2023 at Kapalua’s Plantation Course, leading by six shots after three rounds. He shot 1 under in the final round while Jon Rahm shot 10 under to steal it away.
Morikawa was in contention three weeks later at the Farmers Insurance Open but was bested by a surging Max Homa on Sunday. Morikawa finally felt like his game was getting back on track at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday in May, where he was inside the top 10 entering the final round. But he had to withdraw because of a back injury.
The stats paint Morikawa’s season in a more friendly light than the 26-year-old will himself. He ranks second in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green this season and fifth in SG: Tee-to-Green. With his finish this week he moves to 16th in the FedExCup. None of those felt relevant to Morikawa on Sunday afternoon.
“Winning's everything,” he said. “We're going to go fight for it, we're going to go earn it somehow come the rest of the season.”
Morikawa would allow himself to feel encouraged by his play, though. His goal entering the week was to eliminate the left miss. He did that, despite saying he played “pretty mediocre” in the first three rounds. He didn’t miss left. Then on Sunday, everything came together.
“It's kind of the old Collin hopefully back,” he said.
“The good days are there,” he added. “I know the good iron shots are going to come and whether it’s going to be at The Open or the Playoffs, it’s just nice to see the consistency and at least have the dispersion a little bit better.”
That sentiment was shared by the other playoff participant, Adam Hadwin. Hadwin, too, had a chance to win the tournament outright in regulation. Just off the right side of the green, the Canadian ran his chip just by the hole. Hadwin was the first to putt in the playoff, a birdie look of 25 feet that he thought was going in.
“It was probably about 6 inches too hard to kind of catch the left side of the hole,” said Hadwin, who earned his lone PGA TOUR title at the 2017 Valspar Championship. “I had a sneaky suspicion Rickie was going to make it right after seeing my ball kind of roll right past that."
Hadwin entered the final round unsure of how it would feel to chase victory again. He’s a completely different player than he was as a 29-year-old first-time winner. He remembered the emotions and the patience that made him successful. But how his game would hold up was unknown.
It was about as good as he could have hoped for. A Sunday 67 put him with bigger and more accomplished names in a playoff.
“I'm through the roof right now,” Hadwin said just moments after walking off the 18th green. “I mean, I got myself into a playoff at the end of the day, that's what you want. You want a chance, you want a chance to win a golf tournament.”