A 95-year-old muni golf course on a chilly, windswept, often fogbound peninsula in Northern California just provided the golf world with one of the most thrilling final rounds in major-tournament golf in decades—and a Cal Men’s Golf alumnus was the star of the show.
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| 2020 PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa poses with the Wanamaker Trophy during the trophy presentation ceremony. (Image c 2020 Darren Carroll/PGA of America) |
San Francisco’s Harding Park Golf Course (now TPC Harding Park) was shown to great effect this past week, in wind, fog—and even sunshine—and while some of the biggest hitters in the game were factors in the outcome right to the end, it was a mid-range hitter whose game excels in accuracy who outlasted the bomb-and-gouge brigade to step into the winner’s circle at the end of the day. Collin Morikawa, a 2019 Cal graduate, reigning PAC-12 Men’s Golf champion, and second-year PGA Tour pro who already has two professional wins to his credit, plotted his way around Harding Park with GPS-worthy precision, all the way to the grand prize—the Wanamaker Trophy.
The weather on San Francisco’s west side was overcast but generally calm, with mild temperatures for most of the day, trending chilly as the final pairings closed out their rounds. The firm greens were troublesome for long approach shots, requiring a steep landing angle to hold the putting surface, and the Harding Park greens, derided by some as flattish and uninteresting over the course of the week, befuddled many of the contenders down the stretch with their subtleties.
As many as seven players were tied for the lead over the second half of the round, but their numbers dwindled as bad breaks and bad luck took their toll. Northern California’s Cameron Champ, a Sacramento native and the winner of the season-opening Safeway Open last October at Napa’s Silverado Golf & Country Club, dropped back when an errant drive at the long par-four ninth hole resulted in a double-bogey six, and bogeys on 13 and 15 put paid to his chances for the win. Champ’s 8-under finish netted him his first Top Ten finish in a major tournament, and it is unlikely to be his last.
Bryson DeChambeau, another NorCal native and a big hitter who has achieved notoriety for his recent emphasis on physical bulk as a means to increase his length off the tee, started the day at 6-under and was among a half-dozen or so players who dipped into double-digits under par. Back-to-back bogeys at holes 8 and 9, the one-two punch of hardest-playing holes that closed out the front side, dropped him off the pace. Birdies at 14 and 15 pulled the 2015 U.S. Amateur and NCAA champion back to 10-under, but it would prove sufficient only for a spot in a five-way tie for fourth place.
Dustin Johnson, an early favorite to contend for the title today, has been fighting a seeming majors jinx for much of his career, alleviated only by his 2016 victory in the U.S. Open at Oakmont, and was plagued by near-miss putts in his pursuit of a second major title. Four birdies and two bogeys, at the par-3 third hole and par-4 fifteenth, netted the Carolina native a 2-under round and 11-under for the tournament, good enough for his fifth T2 or solo-second finish in a major.
At the end of the day, and over the closing holes of the final round, it was all about Collin Morikawa. The recent Cal grad posted the lowest round, a 64, and only bogey-free round, among the top 20 finishers. Beyond the raw numbers of the score, his stats tell the tale: 1st in driving accuracy, 1st in approach accuracy, 1st in Strokes Gained-Putting; but those numbers, while impressive, aren’t the thing that people will remember from the final round in his impressive victory— it’s the gunslinger eagle-two that he put up at the par-four 16th hole that will be talked about for years.
Morikawa came to #16 after having chipped in for birdie at #14 to take the lead at 11-under. The course had been set up with a couple of teasingly drivable par-fours, most notably the 16th hole, a scenic two-shotter along the Lake Merced shore that was playing an enticing 300 yards to a center-right pin today, and he had resolved, before the round, not to succumb to the temptation they presented. But on the tee-box at #16, sitting on 11-under, with Paul Casey already in with the same score, and Tony Finau and Bryson DeChambeau in the pairing behind him sitting on -10 and -9, respectively, and both representing threats to pick up another shot or two in the final holes, he made a decision.
“Wednesday night, I had no plans on going for 16 at all. […] Colt Knost, he saw me Wednesday afternoon practicing on there, and he asked me if I was ever going to go for it. I told him a quick no, it’s too much into the wind, why go for it. ”
When his caddie, J.J. Jankovac, asked him what he wanted to do on the tee at #16, Morikawa thought back to the 14th hole at Muirfield Village, in the final round of last month’s Workday Challenge tournament, when he hit a similar shot into the drivable par-four 14th hole, and then went on to win the event in a playoff.
“…It was like 278 to the front, and just a good drive for me. It was going to land just short of that in this weather; it’s going to bounce on up,” Morikawa said in a post-round interview, “(caddie J.J. Jankovac) looked at me, he counted off and asked me what I wanted to do and I told him, ‘Let’s hit a good drive.’”
And “hit a good drive” he did, one that golf fans will be talking about for years. Landing just short of the green, the drive bounded up onto the putting surface, released, and rolled to within seven feet of the hole. After bringing his caddie in to help read the putt, something he rarely does, Morikawa stepped up and rolled it dead-center into the hole for an eagle-two and immediate separation from the field.
Barring some unfortunate mishap on his part, and/or miracle strokes on the part of Finau, DeChambeau, Casey, or Johnson, it was all over at that point; two strokes with two holes to play, let alone three, is too much to ask of any golfer outside of a Hollywood production. Morikawa closed with a pair of pars, though on both holes he came within inches of birdies that would have turned his victory into a late-running blowout.
Morikawa’s 65-64–129 finish is the lowest weekend total for a man in a major championship, and the young man from La Cañada, California, has now joined Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy in the ranks of players who won their first PGA Championship at the age of 23. Besides the $1.98 million paycheck, the win brings with it a five-year exemption on the PGA tour, and entries to the U.S. Open and the Masters.
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