Morikawa Secures Signature Win At Workday Charity Open

.@collin_morikawa now has 2 wins and just 1 missed cut on the PGA Tour since turning pro.

He's the first player since @TigerWoods in 1996 to win twice on Tour before missing 2 cuts as a professional.

Tiger won 43 times before his 2nd missed cut as a pro.

— Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) July 12, 2020

First off, great job by the PGA Tour staff and forecasters who correctly got the final round finished with an early start to the one-off Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village.

Second, thanks to Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Viktor Hovland for a great show of some young-gun golf. Thomas had a weird day and, well he’s still a PGA Championship winner with twelve PGA Tour titles, huge upside, amazing drive, and undoubtedly many more wins the way he delivers most weeks. He said this one “will hurt” (Steve DiMeglio reports from Dublin, Ohio) but I’m not sure anyone who knows golf views this as anything but a tiny blip in Thomas’ career arc.)

But the win by Morikawa—assuming you could stomach the disastrous live golf handoff to streaming and which I addressed on an emergency Shack Show rant—was impressive. A 23-year-old who has been on the Tour just a year, and only a few weeks removed from a heartbreaking loss, and, most amazingly, a winner at storied and difficult Muirfield Village his first four competitive rounds there, speaks to the SoCal/Cal/Walker Cup star’s absurdly promising career start.

I loved the Golf.com Confidential thoughts on Morikawa’s incredible ballstriking and steadiness:

Dethier: Morikawa hit four or five truly spectacular golf shots from over 200 yards on Sunday. Two near-aces. A kick-in eagle. A driver to 15 feet. He’s an absolute sniper and it was really fun to see him get rewarded, despite almost missing from 18 inches just to get into that playoff.

Sens: You hit it as close as he does over and over, you’re going to be in the mix. A lot. Dead-eye ball-striking aside, he also has a calm about him. At the first event back in Texas, he hit some glitches throughout the week but each time was able to right himself and keep himself in the mix. The putter betrayed him, ultimately. But clearly he’s got something special going on between his ears as well.

Bamberger: Great fundamentals. Cool manner. Seems to have no distractions in his life. He’s about the golf. We’ve seen it before most recently with Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. He follows in that tradition.

Final round highlights from PGA Tour Entertainment:

In the final round of the 2020 Workday Charity Open, Collin Morikawa defeated Justin Thomas in a three-hole playoff to claim his second-career win on the PGA...