Two weeks ago, Collin Morikawa stood on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach Golf Links, waiting nearly 30 minutes to hit what would become the most important shot of the last 848 days. When he finally stepped up with a 4-iron in hand, he didn’t think about technique. He didn’t think about the wind ripping off the Pacific. He just played golf.
That approach is what ended a drought that stretched back to October 2023. Morikawa, a two-time major champion and seven-time PGA Tour winner, birdied the 18th hole to claim the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am by a single shot. His third Tour win in his home state of California. And the one that, by his own account, taught him the most.
The win wasn’t a runaway. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player, shot a final-round 63 with three eagles. Sepp Straka eagled the 18th just moments before Morikawa stepped to the tee. Min Woo Lee birdied the same hole. For a stretch, it looked like another near miss, the kind Morikawa had experienced too many times over the previous two years.
But this time was different. And the reason why is worth revisiting, especially now as the PGA Tour builds toward April’s Masters, where Morikawa, armed with new clarity, heads as a genuine contender.
Leaning Into Childhood
In his post-round press conference at Pebble Beach, Morikawa offered a window into what finally shifted. It wasn’t a swing change. It wasn’t equipment. It was a mindset shift.
“I think I’ve been trying to make golf so perfect,” Morikawa said. “Trying to hit these shots and make these putts in a certain way, that you forget how to play the game of golf.”
He traced it back to childhood. Growing up in California, playing Chevy Chase Country Club as a kid, dropping three balls on a single hole just to see what happened. That version of the game — creative, instinctive, joyful — was what he’d spent the last few years moving away from in pursuit of technical perfection.
“I went to go play golf,” he said of his approach over the final two rounds at Pebble Beach. “I caught myself today, even after the bogey on 5, I was like, man, I love being in this position. I hadn’t felt that in such a long time.”
That kind of self-awareness, recognizing what was missing and naming it out loud, is rare at any level of sport. At the elite level, where athletes are often reluctant to show vulnerability, it’s even rarer. Morikawa didn’t blame bad luck or bad breaks. He owned the mental drift and corrected it.
A Week Full of More Than Golf
If the win alone wasn’t enough, Morikawa added one more piece of news during tournament week: he and his wife are expecting a baby this spring. He had just started telling people. By Sunday, the world knew.
There’s something fitting about that timing. A player who spent nearly three years searching for a win, grinding through near misses, runner-up finishes, and the quiet weight of expectations, finds his breakthrough the same week his personal life expands in the most profound way possible.
Two Stories. Same Lesson.
This past Sunday, Jacob Bridgeman won the Genesis Invitational at Riviera, his first PGA Tour victory, by holding on through a nerve-shredding final round. He started the day with a six-shot lead and finished one stroke ahead of Rory McIlroy and Kurt Kitayama after going birdie-less over his final 15 holes.
“I couldn’t even feel my hands on the last couple greens,” Bridgeman said afterward. “I just hit the putt hoping it would get somewhere near the hole.”
Sound familiar? Two very different players. Two very different tournaments. But the same lesson: when it matters most, execution isn’t about perfection — it’s about trust.
Morikawa trusted that he could just play golf, the way he did as a kid. Bridgeman trusted that his steady, unglamorous pars would hold up even when the roars were for someone else. Both won because they stopped chasing perfection and started executing.
What Comes Next
The PGA Tour continues this week at the Cognizant Classic before the Florida Swing leads into The Players Championship in March. The Masters follows in April, and Morikawa, a two-time major champion who now sits fifth in the world, heads into that stretch with momentum, confidence, and a renewed sense of why he plays the game in the first place.
He set a goal this season to win multiple times. “It’s funny to say that considering a guy who hasn’t won in a few years,” he told reporters after Pebble Beach. “But why not? I’ve done it before.”
Two weeks ago, on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, he woke up that morning and told himself to go win. In California, 848 days after his last victory, surrounded by pressure and noise and wind off the Pacific, he remembered how to just play golf.
And that’s exactly what he did.