The 102nd PGA Championship is now in the record books and the most defining word I can come up with to describe this past weekend of major championship golf is “Wow!” Collin Morikawa is the 2020 PGA champ, wine country local and Chico State Hall of Famer J.J. Jakovak has a lot more money in his bank account, and Harding Park Golf Course proved to be a most worthy site for one of the game’s four grand slam tournaments.
Collin Morikawa has been on golf’s radar since he was a teenager. He won the prestigious Western Junior in 2013, the 2015 Trans-Mississippi, the Sunnehanna in 2016, and he added the 2017 Northeast Amateur to his impressive amateur golf resume. He was on the winning 2016 Walker Cup team. He received a sponsor’s invite into the Safeway Open on the PGA Tour in 2016. He was a four-time all-American at Cal-Berkeley and won the 2019 Pac 12 Championship. He graduated from Cal with a degree in business just 15 months ago. He immediately turned pro last summer, made an immediate impact with a pair of top-five finishes, won the Reno-Tahoe Open almost one year ago, and turned in a superb playoff performance just last month when he beat world No. 1 Justin Thomas in a most dramatic playoff at Muirfield Village.
Lots of young, hot-shot golfers have had the pedigree of a young Collin Morikawa, yet what happened last Sunday at Harding Park was nothing short of eye-popping. Going into the final nine holes with the most congested major championship leader board since Raymond Floyd won the 1986 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, Morikawa prevailed over a who’s-who of big-time modern era golfers to collect his first major title. He did it in classic style with a timely chip-in on the 14th hole for birdie to join six other golfers atop the leader board. What followed two holes later is the stuff of golfing lore. Collin attacked the 295-yard, par-4 16th hole with a driver, carried it 280 yards, watched the ball take a big hop onto the green and come to rest 7 feet short of the flagstick. He knocked in the eagle putt and jumped two strokes ahead of the pack. Two tap-in pars later and Morikawa was not only the PGA champion, but also the talk of the world of golf. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, this could be the first of a handful of major titles for a young golfer who seems incredibly well grounded as well as talented.
It was also a win for precision golf, much to the delight of CBS golf commentator and six-time major champion, Nick Faldo (as well as this golf columnist). Faldo was the game’s star in the 1980s and 1990s during what should have been the Greg Norman era. Morikawa pulled a “Faldo” by hitting fairways, hitting greens with great iron play, and demonstrating a remarkably sound putting stroke. When the final stats were compiled, Collin was first for the week in fairways hit off the tee, proximity with his irons to the greens, and strokes gained putting. That’s obviously a solid formula for success. He was only 51st in driving distance, but did that matter at all?
The other winner this past week was Harding Park. The course held up as a superb major championship site and should get another chance at a future PGA. The course setup by Kerry Hughes of the PGA of America was rock-solid. The par-5s played easy, the par-3s were tough, seven of the par-4 were beasts, measuring out to 450 yards or more, and the two driveable par-4s, the seventh and 16th holes, added a sense of drama to the proceedings. CBS did a nice job of showing aerial views of the greater San Francisco area throughout its coverage.
The 2020 PGA was another close call for Dustin Johnson who has now finished runner-up in all four of golf’s majors. He is now 0-for-4 when holding the 54-hole lead in a major championship. His lone major is the 2016 U.S. Open. Jason Day played well all week, but when the dust finally settled he still has his 2015 PGA title but nothing else of major note. The breakout win for big bomber Bryson DeChambeau didn’t materialize. True, he does hit the ball farther than anyone else, but his wedge game is not up to major championship status. Another bomber, Tony Finau, also came up short. He seems totally gifted on the course, but he has yet to come through in the big ones. Sacramento’s Cameron Champ came up just short as well, and probably began to learn what it takes to win a major. So too will Scottie Scheffler who hung in there until the end. The unique swing of Matthew Wolff held up all week, but his putter let him down as he climbed the leader board on Sunday afternoon. Finally, 43-year-old Englishman Paul Casey made it 0-for-64 in majors. One of the golf’s finest ball strikers for close to two decades, he simply couldn’t match Morikawa over the course of the final nine.
While Brooks Koepka is known for his golf trash-talking, it didn’t work out for the four-time major champion this time around. On Saturday evening he downplayed the rest of the leader board, mentioning his four majors when compared to the other contenders. His 74 on Sunday dropped him all the way down to 29th place. For other greats of the game, most notably Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth and world No. 1 Thomas, it was a wasted week. And shame on Rickie Fowler who carelessly whiffed a 6-inch putt on Friday to miss the cut by one stroke. I’m not sure we will ever see Rickie winning a grand slam event.
I also need to give a tip of the golfing cap to J.J. Jakovak. When I saw the Vintage High School of Napa golf star compete in the late 1990s, I was super impressed. He had game and class. He went on to star at Chico State University where he earned a pair of NCAA Division II individual titles in 2002 and 2004. He did not find success on golf’s mini-tours and took to caddying on the PGA Tour, initially for Northern California boys Zack Miller and Matt Bettencourt. He spent seven years working for Ryan Moore and looped for him in the 2016 Ryder Cup. He has been on Collin Morikawa’s bag for the past year and they seem to have a great relationship on the course. He probably got the standard 10 percent for his efforts last week. That would pencil out to $198,000 for his efforts.
Major championship golf returned for the one and only time during the 2019-2020 wraparound PGA Tour season. It featured a big win for Cal-Berkeley grad Collin Morikawa, a nice paycheck for Napa’s J.J. Jakovak, and a lot of positive kudos for the Harding Park Golf Course. The PGA Tour regular season concludes this Sunday in Greensboro and then it’s three weeks of Fed Ex Cup playoffs. Yet as the 2019-2020 season comes to its conclusion, there is no doubt that the breakout star of the last year, Collin Morikawa, is also the PGA Tour’s Golfer of the Year. He is that good, he is that mature, he won the PGA, and his golfing prime has just begun.
