The 2 small details that paid off BIG for Collin Morikawa

It was the last question in a 26-minute press conference on Sunday, but it shed light on what we had just witnessed at Pebble Beach. With the tall, crystal trophy on his left-hand side, Collin Morikawa was asked about his reputation of being one of the best ball-strikers in the game and whether he felt he was back to that level after winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am—and ending a frustrating two-plus-year winless drought in the process.

“You should have seen me on Monday,” he said with a smile on his face.

Just six days earlier, Morikawa says he was struggling. A missed cut in his first start of the season in Hawaii was followed by a lack-lusture T-54 finish in Phoenix. Now, early in Pebble Beach week, he was searching for his game on the range.

“I had about six TaylorMade guys watching me hit golf balls,” he told media. “I asked them how to hit a cut. We looked at it, center face, 8-iron spinning at 6700 [rpm]. So I switched balls, switched balls to a spinnier ball this week [TaylorMade TP5x]. Why not. So thank you to the TaylorMade guys because without that, honestly who knows what the balls could have done.”

A small detail. But ultimately, the secret to success in professional golf is often in the details.

At times throughout the week, the 29-year-old Morikawa looked more like the 23-year-old version of himself, the golfer who was taking dead aim at flags at TPC Harding Park en route to his first breakthrough win at the 2020 PGA Championship. In the years since, he has battled to reach those heights. But, for now, he appears to have re-captured the secret to his elite ball-striking.

So, other than the ball, what changed?

If you listen to Morikawa, he appears to have made an attitude adjustment of sorts on Friday night. Along with the news that he is going to become a father for the first time later this year, and along with the red wine he (unusually) shared with his pro-am partners in the evenings (he says he rarely drinks during events but made an exception, given the company), he had a conversation with his coach, Rick Sessinghaus. The gist: Rediscover that early version of himself that played fearless in his first few years as a professional.

Sessinghaus recounted his memories of that player to Morikawa on the range, explaining that the golfer he saw then wasn’t interested in top-10s or top-20s, he was out to win. And he did it by playing the game, not playing shots and swings.

“There's an art to golf,” Morikawa said in his press conference on Sunday evening. “I think with more and more technology, it's great to advance and then figure out what you need to do better and how to perfect certain things, how to hit great shots. But there's an art, and we're all artists at heart. Like I said I've gone away from that a little bit.”

That was the focus for the weekend at Pebble. And it worked.

On Saturday, Morikawa put together arguably the best round of his career. He posted a 10-under-par 62 around Pebble Beach and its tiny greens. He hit every one of them, en route to gaining 6.5 shots in his approach play.

Is that good? In short, it’s elite.

It was the best SG Approach round of Morikawa’s career. It was the best SG Approach round in tournament history. In fact, it was one of the 10 best SG Approach rounds in PGA Tour history, since shot-by-shot data began in 2004.

The best SG Approach round of Tiger Woods’ career came at the 2009 BMW Championship. In the second round, he gained 6.3 shots. Scottie Scheffler’s best is 5.7 at Muirfield Village in 2023. McIlroy’s best, a 5.1 round he put together in Mexico back in 2017.

A ball change and change of perspective, and it looked like Morikawa had rediscovered the iron play that has seen him rank inside the top five on the PGA Tour in SG Approach in six of the last seven seasons.

And under the gun on Sunday, it stood up once again.

When he missed the green on the short par-3 fifth, it ended a run in which he had hit 32 of his last 33 greens in regulation … at Pebble Beach, where the greens are nearly 50 percent smaller than the average green size on the PGA Tour.

He made bogey and fell outside the top five on the leaderboard. Was this to become another disappointing slip down the leaderboard on a Sunday.

No, it wasn’t.

A 260-yard, uphill 3-wood on the par-5 sixth hole set up an easy birdie, then he walked onto the iconic seventh tee. Teeing it up into the strongest wind gusts of the day, the 109-yard hole was playing closer to 140 yards and ready to reject the slightest of mishits.

Morikawa and his caddie, Mark Urbanek, stood on the tee for a noticeable amount of time, discussing the shot. Could he get a wedge there? Or was it a 9-iron? Perhaps even an 8?

He pulled a 9-iron and aced the examination. A flighted knock-down that landed eight feet beyond the hole, spinning back to five feet.

He rolled in the putt, gave a subtle fist-pump and tied the lead. He said afterwards, it was the best shot he hit all day.

“I've stood on that tee when it's been really windy and you start thinking about numbers, you start thinking about is 9-iron enough, is it 8-iron, is it a wedge? I just took out 9-iron. I looked at Mark and we kind of nodded heads. It's all feel, and that's that artistry I think that a lot of people lose maybe over time. You definitely have that as a kid and it's how do you get that back. This week was really, really big for pulling that out.”

A hole later, he was back at it.

On the challenging par-4 eighth hole, he faced a difficult approach from 185 yards, to a back left pin position. A tricky shot for a player who has mastered a fade. Yet, he rode the right-to-left wind and controlled a seven-iron that once again pitched directly behind the flag and spun to just seven feet.

After that poor iron shot on the fifth, Morikawa answered it with three, near-perfect swings. Combined, they gained 1.5 shots. Keep in mind that Scheffler was the only player on the PGA Tour in 2025 to average more than 1.0 strokes gained approach. Morikawa bettered that with just three swings and was now playing from the front.

He played steady early on the back nine, leaning on his putter to convert birdies on the 11th and 15th holes. By the time he was in the middle of the fairway on the 16th, he was one ahead. It was his tournament to lose.

From 180 yards, he hit another iron his 23-year-old self would have been proud of. A towering fade to a back-right pin position that finished pin-high, just eight feet away. Moments later, another birdie and he was two ahead.

But the job wasn’t finished.

With the rain coming down and wind in his face, he pulled his tee shot on the 17th hole, later saying he got caught trying to take too much distance off the shot. A challenging shot, but a short-side miss and he failed to save par.

He was now tied, with Min Woo Lee, at 21 under par. One hole remained. And what a hole.

Morikawa found the fairway on picturesque 18th, leaving himself 235 yards into the par 5. However, his shot at victory had to wait. In the group ahead, Jacob Bridgeman was having his issues on the closing hole. Having found the beach with this second shot and failing to find dry land with his third, there were rulings, drops and a 19-minute wait for Morikawa in the fairway.

When the green finally cleared, the stage was set. Morikawa pulled 4-iron and boldly started the ball over the rocks trusting his ball-striking and the wind to bring it back towards the hole. And right on cue, the ball tracked back to the green, coming to rest 25 feet from the hole in the fringe. Two putts later, he was the champion.

His seventh PGA Tour win, his first since October 2023 and just his second since winning the 2021 Open Championship. And it came on the back of the iron play we all expect from Morikawa, yet haven’t seen as often in recent performances.

His +9.7 strokes gained tee-to-green was the fourth best of his PGA Tour career. In challenging weather, around Pebble Beach, he rediscovered the ball control that saw him win two majors in his first seven major starts.

“It was a small insight into just being able to control the ball and seeing the shots that I've seen before.” Morikawa said about his pre-tournament ball switch. “It was pretty cool. It was really cool to have that control again because I felt like I've been close but something's been off.”

For now, at least, the monkey on his back is off. Collin Morikawa is a PGA Tour winner once again.