'I still have it in me': Collin Morikawa back in contention, ready to re-kindle major mojo at PGA Championship

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Memories are fickle. Overarching moments stand the rigors of time, but the particulars fade. The 2024 Masters will be remembered for Scottie Scheffler, his unrelenting consistency and his arrival as golf’s next juggernaut. Ludvig Åberg netting a runner-up finish in his first major will be mentioned, too. Those moments will remain clear in our minds.

Collin Morikawa’s Masters will occupy a different space in the collective consciousness. There will be snippets of a double-bogey on the ninth or his water ball on the 11th that officially thwarted his green jacket hopes, but the memories will be fuzzy. See, only so much can be remembered. Greatness and triumph and even abject failure are sticky. Everything else dissolves away.

Morikawa has operated in the middle for the last two years, stuck in the historical gray area where most golfers reside. Good enough to conjure the “almosts,” “close calls” and occasional wins, as Morikawa did at last year’s ZOZO Championship, but not the transcendent play in the biggest moments that linger in the mind. That’s reserved mostly for the Schefflers, Woods and McIlroys of the world.

The difference with Morikawa is he was there. He was once the up-and-coming superstar, the heir apparent to Tiger Woods and the leader in the “how many majors will they win” clubhouse. Morikawa won two of his first five major starts as a pro and was quickly the superstar of the next generation. Then, slowly, he wasn’t. Others rose, and Morikawa plateaued. Stardom is a “what have you done for me lately” game and Morikawa hasn’t had much to show. He went 27 months between wins and racked up major finishes that looked more impressive on Wikipedia than they felt in the moment.

It’s why rounds like Friday are notable. Not just because Morikawa shot 65 for the second day in a row, but because it was the latest in a growing string of performances that leads you to believe Morikawa will soon be back to what he once was – a consistent contender and winner at the biggest events every year.

Morikawa sees it, too.

“I know I still have it in me, and that's what's exciting,” he said after his second round, which included a stretch of five consecutive birdies, the longest streak of his championship. Morikawa is 11-under, one shot back of Xander Schauffele headed into the weekend.

To be fair, Morikawa always believed he had it in him. It’s the only thing that Morikawa has sustained with much consistency. He gets out of bed every morning expecting the day will be his – that a good round is coming and a win isn’t far behind. That’s all well and good. Belief is a necessary part of the puzzle. But if everything else goes awry, it’s nothing but false hope.

For points of the last two years, it’s been only hope. The golf swing and the putter have taken turns betraying him. He rode short-term swing feels to successful one-offs, but nothing sustained. Morikawa parted ways with childhood swing coach Rick Sessinghaus last fall, believing they had “exhausted all (their) resources” and started working with Mark Blackburn. Morikawa won in Japan last November and had several top results to start 2024, but week-in and week-out excellence eluded him. Morikawa is a perfectionist with his swing, which wasn’t meeting the standard. So he returned to Sessinghaus before the Masters. On the surface, it was another sign Morikawa was in the wilderness, searching for a way back to the Morikawa of old. And maybe it was. But it worked.

“I don't regret it at all,” Morikawa said. “Look, at the time, let's call it last fall, I thought I had to (change), and to be honest, if I did it again, I probably would do it again because I thought we had exhausted all of our resources and all the things we tried and nothing was working. So I couldn't get that shot what I wanted. So what do you do? You change. If I kept going down that path, who knows where I'd be.”

Morikawa and Sessinghaus unlocked something in his swing on Monday at Augusta that has stuck with him since and has not fallen off. Morikawa is always coy, never sharing the specifics of the change, but he admitted Friday that it stemmed from “keeping things simple” and unleashing his creativity.

It was also where Morikawa switched putters. He gained strokes on the green at Augusta and again at the RBC Heritage and Wells Fargo Championship. He’s overwhelmingly gaining strokes at Valhalla this week, ranking in the top 15 in Strokes Gained: Putting through two rounds.

So, even in the face of disappointment at Augusta, it provided the blueprint. He finished in a tie for third and, more importantly, put himself back in the arena. He felt the juices of contention in a major championship, feelings that have been fleeting since his 2021 Open Championship victory.

“It sucked to finish like that and it sucked to lose to Scottie, but at the end of the day, I knew I had three more majors coming up and to prep for that and get things as sharp as possible and just come out strong.”

One strong finish could still be considered a one-off. Morikawa’s encore at Valhalla, a course that couldn’t be more different from Augusta, suggests it’s something more. Morikawa made seven birdies to just one bogey on Friday. He made five straight birdies on the front nine, his second nine, that spurred memories of vintage Morikawa. It was a ball-striking display, peppering flags with controlled aggression. Three of the birdies came from less than 10 feet. He holed a 16-footer at No. 5 and a 34-footer at No. 6.

It’s what it looks like when he has every facet of his game humming. The game has finally caught back up to the belief. To Morikawa, that means the memories and majors can’t be far behind.