Morikawa

Collin Morikawa belied his lack of experience to win the PGA Championship on his debut in 2020, and then The Open at his first try last July. Robin Barwick spoke to the fastest learner in the majors and his longstanding coach

Collin Morikawa was tied with Paul Casey for the lead late in the final round of the 2020 PGA Championship at Harding Park, San Francisco. The pair were just a shot ahead of Bryson DeChambeau, Jason Day and Tony Finau, with Dustin Johnson launching a late bid. It was a misty, pastel day by Lake Merced—it is the Bay Area, remember—and Morikawa’s grey sweater matched the tones of the distant hills under this pale sky. There was an eerie atmosphere, too. It was the final throes of a major championship, bunched up leaderboard, destiny hovering above, yet the pandemic had kept away the galleries, and a muted calm on the golf course was at odds with the sporting spectacle.

Morikawa was pretty calm, too. As he strode up to the short par-four 16th he found the tee markers moved further forward than anticipated. The hole was brought down to 293 yards, the green just off-center to the right, with a stand of cypress trees ready to tangle with anything sliced, and it was a perfect fit for Morikawa’s dependable cut with the driver.

A major champion [above], and [right] with fiance Katherine Zhu, caddie J.J. Jakovac, Rick Sessinghaus and manager Andrew Kipper

The 23-year-old (at the time) from Los Angeles— playing in his first ever PGA Championship—hadn’t planned to take driver, but he had the clarity of mind to play the hole as it was presented and to seize the opportunity. The fearless pretender played the perfect shot. His drive faded into the green from the left, took one bounce short of the putting surface and rolled up to stop just seven feet from the hole. Standing on the 17th tee ahead, Casey would later call Morikawa’s tee shot a “nail in the coffin.” Morikawa guided in the seven-foot eagle putt and held his composure to beat Casey and Johnson’s late flourish by two.

“I wasn’t planning on going for it at the beginning of the week,” admitted Morikawa afterwards. “I actually never even tried it. It was just something when everything fit; the circumstance, wind and everything was perfect, and obviously it worked out.”

Rick Sessinghaus has coached Morikawa since the golfer was eight years old. Sessinghaus was one of the few people walking with Morikawa that Sunday at Harding Park, along with the golfer’s manager Andrew Kipper and girlfriend (now fiancé) Katherine Zhu.

“The shot happened to match exactly what a stock driver is for Collin, so he made the decision,” starts Sessinghaus, who first met Morikawa on the driving range at Scholl Canyon, a small club overlooking Los Angeles. “Some people might say he did it under pressure, but to Collin it was simply the right shot for him to play in that situation. I really appreciate that Collin is able to make those decisions in that kind of situation.”

Morikawa showed the same composure 11 months later, when paired with Louis Oosthuizen in the final group in the fourth round of The 2021 Open at Royal St. George’s. Like at the 2020 PGA, Morikawa was making his debut in The Open, and again, he showed almost unbelievable calm to vanquish more seasoned challengers; ultimately finishing two ahead of Jordan Spieth and four shots clear of Oosthuizen and world No.1 Jon Rahm.

“In the moment Collin is a very focused, calm and composed individual, whether that is on the golf course or not,” adds Sessinghaus, who is a mind coach as well as a PGA professional. “That characteristic only intensifies in a positive way when Collin is under pressure. It is a default.

“It’s like: ‘Okay, I am hitting the tee shot on the 16th at Harding Park. This is going to be fun.’ That perspective is unique. I have cultivated that but Collin already had it at an early age.”

“I pretty much had plastic clubs in my hands before I could walk,” remembers Morikawa in an exclusive interview with Kingdom. “I took my first lessons at the age of five and I loved it, and I think I had a decent swing, which is not that crazy to say for a five-year-old. I joined a junior camp at Scholl Canyon, and down at the far end of the range was this guy Rick giving private lessons, and he has now been my coach for 16 years.”

As he says, lots of kids have good golf swings. Lots of teenagers have beautifully honed golf swings. What separated Morikawa from an early age was his attitude and intelligence.

“Even aged only nine, 10 and 11, here was someone who always had a smile on his face, his parents were always supportive,” recalls Sessinghaus. “Collin was always in a good mood, he asked great questions, he liked to compete.

“That is important because a lot of juniors begin to suffer under the pressure put on them by parents and their golf becomes all about having to win a tournament, whereas with Collin and his parents it was always about developing as a player but also always to have fun. If he did play a poor tournament he never made excuses and that’s rare. Collin had a mindset where he was constantly learning, always curious and he put long-term success over short-term fixes.”

Morikawa’s father Blaine was a capable athlete and growing up he was as happy on a surfboard off Long Beach as he was playing baseball or basketball. Morikawa also picked up little league baseball, but his top sporting highlight off the golf course wasn’t on a diamond:

“I’d say the seventh grade Basketball Bowl,” says the former La Canada High School pupil, who turned 25 in February. “It was a one-day event during Thanksgiving, which was a lot of fun. I was MVP for our team and so I would put that high among my career achievements, right next to my majors!”

Yet Morikawa’s favorite playground was the 10-hole golf course at Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale.

“Chevy Chase is a narrow, very short golf course, and it forced me to be creative,” explains Morikawa. “There were probably only 10 people there a day max., seriously. They had this plateau where you could hit your own balls and pick

Morikawa and Sessinghaus at the 2017 U.S. Amateur

them up but I hated doing that so they would give me a cart and I would always just go on the golf course and drop a lot of golf balls on the ground.

“There were a couple other guys there, a couple years older than me, who played high school golf, and we would create our own golf holes. We would start on the tee box for number two but play to the fifth green. The golf course was so empty that we could make up our own holes in our own little competition and that was the fun part about growing up around that golf course.”

Morikawa enjoyed an astonishing debut in The Open

By the time Morikawa was 12, Sessinghaus knew he had the mental and emotional capability to forge an exceptional future in golf. When Morikawa won the 2013 Western Junior aged 15, the golfer began to realize it, too. The Western Junior is played over 72 holes, and that week at Meridian Hills CC, Indianapolis, Morikawa beat a host of older teenagers, shooting four rounds in the 60s to win by five. His 271 was the lowest score in the tournament since Hunter Mahan’s 266 from 14 years before.

“That was the first big junior event I won,” adds Morikawa. “You have to do something special to win and at that point I knew I had that within me. Before then I had top-10 finishes, but winning is different. I hadn’t had the spark to really figure out how to win until then. You have to learn how to win to get to the top level.

“Then as I was transitioning between high school and college I won the Trans Miss Championship and that really catapulted me to the point where I fully believed that, ‘Yes, I can beat everyone out here. I’m not afraid. Let’s see what we can do.’ At that point I was 18.”

Three times Morikawa was named first-team All American at University of California, Berkeley, and on the 2017 U.S. Walker Cup team the smiling assassin won all four of his matches as the home team trounced GB&I in what was as close to a home setting for Morikawa as they come, at Los Angeles Country Club.

From there you are nearly up to date. Morikawa graduated, turned pro in 2019 and promptly made his first 22 cuts on the PGA Tour, an achievement second only to the record of 25 set by Tiger Woods. And within that run was victory in Morikawa’s sixth start, at the 2019 Barracuda Championship.

“It still bites me that I was not able to beat Tiger’s record,” he says. Well, don’t worry too much Collin: not even Woods won any majors on his debuts, whereas Morikawa has done it twice—an astonishing record that is likely to stand not just for years, but perhaps for generations. (Even that momentous victory by Woods in the 1997 Masters—his first major win—was his third attempt at Augusta National. Talk about keeping us all waiting…)

By the way, in July 2020 Morikawa won his second PGA Tour title at the Workday Charity Open, defeating Justin Thomas in a playoff. That meant Morikawa had won twice before he had even missed two cuts on the PGA Tour. The last golfer to do that? You guessed it: Tiger, back in 1996.

When records and comparisons with Tiger Woods keep coming up, as they do for Morikawa, you know something special is occurring.

Morikawa splashes out during the final round of the 2020 PGA Championship

Morikawa didn’t realize it at the time, but as a teenager, when Sessinghaus would take him out on the golf course at Scholl Canyon, the coach was working on his mental fortitude more than technique.

“Seventy percent of our lessons were on the golf course,” explains Sessinghaus. “I would put Collin in golf situations where he felt uncomfortable and make him problem solve. Back then Collin just thought that was what golf lessons were about, but I was teaching him how to use routines to be confident and focused and how to think through shots so he would feel committed to playing a good shot. We talked about that a lot.

“I would want Collin to make the wrong decision in a situation because that is how he would learn to make the right decision in the future. It is pattern recognition and Collin does a very good job of that.”

With these problem-solving lessons, Morikawa was working towards finding what Sessinghaus calls a “flow state,” which the coach has adopted from the theory of Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a professor at Claremont Graduate University, California).

“Flow state is when we are performing our best, feeling our best, and physiological markers like heart rate and brainwave activity are lower,” says Sessinghaus. “There is a calmness, a focus. Flow state is about focusing on the present moment and that is a high-level skill of Collin’s. He can focus on the present moment and be calm through a mind-body connection, no matter if there is pressure or whatever else you want to call it. It is just another opportunity for him to focus on the present moment.

“Flow state is about confidence. It is the ability to know you have made the right decision and know you have the skills to perform the shot.”

And there we are, transported back to the 16th tee at Harding Park, in the final round of the 2020 PGA Championship, when Morikawa drove for the green with his first major title hanging in the balance, and did so with the measured belief of that young man playing cross-country at Chevy Chase. That wasn’t a pressure situation to Morikawa; it was an opportunity to have some fun—just another chance to do what he loves.

It was 1962 when golf’s four gilt-edged major prizes were claimed by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player between them. Now 60 years ago, it was the only year in which these three legends swept the major spoils and it spurned the indelible tag of “The Big 3”, as they have been known ever since. Robin Barwick has been scrolling through the archives

THERE WAS SERENDIPITY to the World Series of Golf in September 1962 at Firestone CC in Akron, Ohio. They could not have hoped for a better line-up for the inauguration of this high-stakes showdown between the year’s major champs. Arnold Palmer was Masters and [British] Open champion, Jack Nicklaus had won the U.S. Open and Gary Player took the PGA Championship. The World Series was designed for four golfers but on this occasion they settled for three.

That first World Series of Golf was a portent of the new order taking hold in at least two ways. First, with Nicklaus a major champ for the first time that June—having only turned professional in December 1961—a fascinating three-way battle had quickly emerged for golf’s pre-eminence between a trio of quite distinct characters.

Golf’s new triumvirate came to the fore just as live sports broadcasting was picking up momentum of its own, and the TV networks realized golf’s potential on the small screen. NBC sent a 50-man, nine-camera outdoor broadcast crew to Akron to provide live television coverage of the World Series of Golf in multi-color. Producer Perry N. Smith told reporters: “For one thing, this is the biggest color remote broadcast ever attempted”.

In Denver, though, they were incensed. While the regular PGA event that week—the Denver Open Invitational at Denver Country Club—offered a first prize of $4,600, the World Series of Golf blew Denver out of the water with a first prize of $50,000. Even the Masters—with the most generous winner’s cheque among the four majors—could offer only $20,000. Noble Chalfant, organizer of the Denver Open, was naturally demoralized that his event was deprived the three biggest names in golf. He threatened legal action against the PGA of America and derided the controversial World Series of Golf as “an exhibition and not a legitimate tournament”.

It was also around this time, September 1962, that newspapers started to describe the three rivals as “The Big Three”.

“Big Three at Firestone” ran the headline in The Evening Independent in Massillon, Ohio on September 6, two days before the event. “GOLFDOM’S BIG THREE”, ran a caption in the Fort Lauderdale News on September 8.

“PALMER, PLAYER AND NICKLAUS—GOLFING’S BIG THREE…” exclaimed the caption in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, September 9, between the two rounds of the World Series.

On the golf course at Firestone and hinting at his subsequent dominance of the world game, 22-year-old Nicklaus outshone his more experienced rivals over 36 holes. Palmer posted a course record 65 in the first round but faded with a 74 in the second. Nicklaus finished on 135, five under par and four ahead of his rivals.

In the Cincinnati Enquirer on September 11: “If the ‘World Series of Golf’ means anything, it has to mean that Nicklaus, winner of the 36-hole test matching the game’s Big Three here Sunday, has taken over the throne at the ripe old age of 22”. (Palmer would have taken issue with that bold statement but that is another story.) “The Big Three” moniker was here to stay.

Alastair Johnston works for marketing giant IMG, the company founded by Mark McCormack and built on his work representing Palmer, Nicklaus and Player.

“The World Series of Golf in 1962 was a big deal,” starts Johnston, who worked closely with Palmer and Player in particular. “It was at around this point that these three golfers began to enjoy total domination.”

McCormack shook on a deal to manage Palmer’s affairs in 1961—an arrangement that lasted the rest of their lives. Player and Nicklaus then emerged as Palmer’s closest, fiercest rivals, but there was also a strong affinity between the three men and Palmer cleared the way for both Player and Nicklaus to work with McCormack in 1962.

“There was a kind of travelling introduction of ‘The Big Three’ name,” argues Johnston. “It was a gradual process and then Mark created the TV concept of ‘Big 3 Golf’ at the back end of 1964. From there ‘The Big Three’ name stuck.”

“The Big Three” moniker was tattooed on the American consciousness when McCormack negotiated the eight-part “Big Three Golf” TV series, which began broadcasting nationwide in the United States by NBC in spring 1965. There were other high-ratings TV matches but “Big Three Golf” was the biggest hit. The three golfers played each other at a series of spectacular courses including Los Angeles Country Club, Firestone, St Andrews and Carnoustie in Scotland, and onto Dorado Beach in Puerto Rico. The ratings soared.

“Our rivalry happened at a time when golf was just beginning to take deep root in the broader American sports psyche,” Palmer later said. “The intensity of our competition, as well as the distinct differences in our personalities, created tremendous natural drama and a fan interest in the professional game that had never been seen before.

“I needed Jack to remind me what my Pap had warned me from the beginning; there was always going to be some talented young guy out there who could beat you 10 ways to Sunday, so you’d better never let your guard down. I think Jack needed me to serve as the high standard he was aiming for. If he could beat me, which he ultimately did, he could beat anybody and become the greatest player in the game.”

Once “The Big Three” became, in 1962, its repetition spread like wild fire. Those 1962 majors were the kindling and that elitist and excessive “exhibition”—the first World Series of Golf—was the spark.

The Evening Independent (Massillon, Ohio) · 6 Sep 196

The Big Three played for a $50,000 first prize at Firestone in September 1962, and [right] The Evening Independent in Massillon, Ohio was among the first adopters of the “Big Three” nickname

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APRIL 5-9

In 1962 Palmer, aged 32 at the time, was in his captivating prime, but to put the 1962 Masters into context, the story begins 12 months earlier, with a Masters remembered mainly for Palmer’s double-bogey six at the 72nd hole that handed a one-stroke victory to Player. Fast forward a year and Palmer arrived at Augusta still steaming about his costly lapse and hell-bent on setting the record straight. Scores of 70, 66 and 69 gave Palmer a four-shot lead over Player going into the final round (the exact reverse of 1961), but fellow American Dow Finsterwald was sandwiched between them in second place, just two back. A closing 75 from Palmer, 73 from Finsterwald and 71 from Player meant all three players finished 72 holes tied on 280, eight under par. After a modest start to the tournament’s first three-way playoff, Palmer reeled off a blistering back nine of 31 for a 68 that sealed his third green jacket, and thus tied Sam Snead and Jimmy Demaret for the then record number of Masters victories. Player finished the playoff on 71 while Finsterwald limped in on 77.

1 Arnold Palmer USA 70 66 69 75 280 68 2 Gary Player SA 67 71 71 71 280 71 3 Dow Finsterwald USA 74 68 65 73 280 77 4 Gene Littler USA 71 68 71 72 282 T5 Jerry Barber USA 72 72 69 74 287 T5 Jimmy Demaret USA 73 73 71 70 287 T5 Billy Maxwell USA 71 73 72 71 287 T5 Mike Souchak USA 70 72 74 71 287

JUNE 14-17

Having turned professional at the end of 1961, Nicklaus won for the first time as a pro in spectacular fashion, defeating Palmer in an 18-hole playoff in the U.S. Open at Oakmont near Pittsburgh, where local hero Palmer was supposed to win and where the partisan support was vociferous. Nicklaus, who had finished second and fourth as an amateur in the two previous U.S. Opens, displayed a fortitude that refused to allow the hostile crowd to break his concentration, and after six holes of the playoff he held a four-stroke lead. Palmer rallied but in the end capitulated by three strokes, 71-74. Admiringly, Palmer noted that the crowd hadn’t fazed Nicklaus one bit but, as a staunch advocate of fair play, he was bothered by the abuse. Another thing that bothered him—although he never used it as an excuse—was a deep cut on a finger that had required stitches only a few days before the championship. One difference between himself and Nicklaus that Palmer did rue, publicly, was the number of three-putts they had on Oakmont’s treacherous greens. Whilst Palmer three-stabbed 13 times across 90 holes, Nicklaus only did so once. “I’ll tell you something,” came Palmer’s portentous and oft-repeated words after Nicklaus had won, “now that the big guy is out of the cage everybody better run for cover”.

Nicklaus was the youngest U.S. Open winner since Bobby Jones in 1923 and the first, since Jones in 1930, to hold both the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur Championship trophies simultaneously.

1 Jack Nicklaus USA 72 70 72 69 283 71 2 Arnold Palmer USA 71 68 73 71 283 74 T3 Phil Rodgers USA 74 70 69 72 285 T3 Bobby Nichols USA 70 72 70 73 285 5 Gay Brewer USA 73 72 73 69 287 T6 Gary Player SA 71 71 72 74 288 T6 Tommy Jacobs USA 74 71 73 70 288

JULY 11-13

When Palmer made his [British] Open debut in 1960 at St. Andrews, Australian Kel Nagle beat him by a stroke. At the 1962 Open at Troon on the west coast of Scotland, it was a rolereversal, with Palmer finishing first (his sixth major win) and Nagle second. This time, though, it wasn’t remotely close. Palmer led Nagle by five going into the final round and finished with a six-stroke victory. To underline the extent of his superiority that week, Nagle was a further seven shots ahead of the third-placed golfers, Phil Rodgers and Welshman Brian Huggett. It was Palmer’s second straight win in the game’s oldest championship, and his popularity that week with the spectators was such that the R&A were forced to introduce stricter crowd control measures. The roping-off of fairways and the fencing of course boundaries began a year later, after thousands of fans at Troon evaded the turnstiles and stormed the golf course from the beach.

Palmer’s total of 276 tied Ben Hogan’s record low score in a major, from the 1948 U.S. Open at Riviera.

1 Arnold Palmer USA 71 69 67 69 276 2 Kel Nagle Aus 71 71 70 70 282 T3 Brian Huggett Wal 75 71 74 69 289 T3 Phil Rodgers USA 75 70 72 72 289 5 Bob Charles NZ 75 70 70 75 290 T6 Sam Snead USA 76 73 72 71 292 T6 Peter Thomson Aus 70 77 75 70 292

JULY 19-22

Aweek after missing the halfway cut in The Open at Troon, the Black Knight was back on his charger and setting the record straight. The 1962 PGA Championship— Pennsylvania’s second major of the year—was held at Aronimink Country Club, Donald Ross’s masterpiece in Newtown Square near Philadelphia, that even in those days measured over 7,000 yards. It proved a fitting stage for Player’s third major victory, and the sixth of his PGA Tour career.

Trailing by one to Doug Ford at the halfway stage, Player edged ahead with a third-round 69 and went on to hold off fast finishing Bob Goalby by a single shot with a closing 70 for a 72-hole total of 278, two under par. George Bayer, who trailed Player by two after 54 holes, tied for third on 281 with Nicklaus who surged through the field with a final round of 67. Palmer, who won a total of nine times in 1962, was never really a factor, tying for 17th.

1 Gary Player SA 72 67 69 70 278 2 Bob Goalby USA 69 72 71 67 279 T3 George Bayer USA 69 70 71 71 281 T3 Jack Nicklaus USA 71 74 69 67 281 5 Doug Ford USA 69 69 73 71 282 6 Bobby Nichols USA 72 70 71 70 283