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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Losing a three-stroke lead with five holes to go at the Arnold Palmer Invitational isn’t how Collin Morikawa envisioned his Sunday playing out. After signing his scorecard for shooting 72 and getting leapfrogged by Russell Henley, no words of sympathy or encouragement were going to lift his spirits. The last thing Morikawa wanted to do was relive how it all went wrong with the media waiting for him to deliver the quotes to spice up their stories. And so he split.
“Just heated. Just pissed,” he said of his state of being on Sunday evening. “Like I don’t owe anyone anything. No offense to you guys, but for me in the moment of that time, I didn’t want to be around anyone. Like, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t need any sorries. I didn’t need any ‘good playings.’ Like, you’re just pissed.”
While all of that makes perfect sense, it’s a bad look and one that players, including Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open, are feeling more comfortable doing with no repercussions. Instead, Morikawa answered about a dozen questions on Tuesday at his press conference ahead of the Players Championship on how he was dealing with the disappointment that he could’ve nipped in the bud on Sunday.
“Honestly, if it was an hour later I would have talked to you guys, but an hour later I was on my way out to here, because I didn’t want to be in Orlando anymore. But I just felt like I put everything I did into the, let’s call it, seven hours of my time being there, right, a few hours before showing up, physio, workout. Look, my entire routine, right. I was just drained,” he explained. “I get it. Like you guys are there to figure out how we played and how things went, but in my perspective, like I just didn’t want to talk to anyone, and I think that’s fair to myself, you know.”
It was Morikawa’s ninth top-5 finish without a victory since last season, the most on Tour. It was also his fourth runner-up finish since winning the 2023 Zozo Championship and his 11th career second-place finish. Morikawa’s final-round scoring average of 70.42 last season ranked 127th on Tour and was a full two strokes higher than the first round. No doubt, the course setup is harder on Sundays as is the pressure of payday and a trophy being handed out, but Morikawa said he spent much of his fall and offseason figuring out how to play better in the final round.
“When you don’t play well and you don’t close it out, you’re like, how do we go back to the drawing board,” he said. “It’s not really rip everything off and start over, but there’s just little things, right.”
On Sunday, he and caddie J.J. Jakovac talked out what went wrong and hugged it out in the locker room and did the same with his wife back at his condo.
“For me, it’s not really about words. Like, I don’t need someone to pep me up and say, ‘good job,’ ” he said. “I think I know where I’m at and I know where I’m at with my golf. I just have to win. I have to be able to close it out. For me, that’s going to come down to me. I’m the one hitting the shot. I’m the one pulling off the shots, hitting, doing what I need to do. But for me it’s not about the words to fluff it up.”
Morikawa, a two-time major winner at age 28, is in a much better place in terms of his golf game than a year ago when he had shot a second-round 80 at Bay Hill Lodge & Club and missed the cut at Arnie’s Place. After another lackluster performance at TPC Sawgrass, he called his old coach Rick Sessinghaus and parted ways with Mark Blackburn, who ironically gave Henley a chipping lesson last week before he chipped in for eagle at 16, which turned out to be difference maker.
“Someimes golf is just mean like that,” Henley said.
Morikawa takes solace in the fact he rediscovered his trust in his trademark fade.
“Last year I was never in the position really swing-wise to go and do that so I was always kind of fighting that,” he said. “Even in the practice and the warmups, like just fighting what shot I was going to be able to play that day.”
He knows he didn’t give away the title on Sunday but he didn’t do what was necessary to slam the door shut. He pointed to a bogey at the 10th hole that he wished he could’ve played differently and would’ve allowed him to build an even bigger lead. But he’s ready to move on to TPC Sawgrass, a course he called one of the best tests of the year.
“I’m going to think about it. I know what happened. I fully am aware of how it played out. But I just have to move on and I have to learn from it. I have to keep getting better,” he said. “Like I always say, why not win this week.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Why Collin Morikawa skipped media session after losing Arnold Palmer
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