PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico – Collin Morikawa is getting old.
He said it himself, with a big smile, and it might have been the reason why his body hasn’t been moving the way he would have liked through the 2022 calendar year. A lot of traveling. A lot of work. A lot of effort to try to become the best in the world.
But he’s got a plan in place to end this year with a bang at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, and hopefully get a bit of the sour taste of a winless 2021-22 campaign out of his mouth before the holiday season.
“This year’s been fairly stressful, a little frustrating at the same time. I think some guys are definitely taking it easy and I’ve kind of ramped it up just trying to kind of figure things out,” said Morikawa. “I want to finish this fall on the best of foot forward as possible. That’s why I come to these tournaments… to come out here and play well and hopefully win.”
Morikawa notched two runner-up results last season – THE CJ CUP and The Genesis Invitational – and had eight top-10 finishes. His ball-striking remained elite, finishing third on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Approach The Green. The momentum hasn’t been there through the fall portion of the 2022-23 season, however, as he finished tied for 45th at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP and then tied for 29th at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina.
The two-time major champion admitted he did “a lot of searching” after starting his year in Dubai on the DP World Tour with a few lackluster results. Things “just never felt good,” he said.
“Just kind of was searching for that game, searching for just kind of a normal,” he said. “The problem is when I search is like, I search for perfection, right?”
As he looks back on the year that was, he said he knows what he needs to do.
And he’s already started to tighten the screws.
“Man, like I drank way more in college than I ever do now, but apparently when you get older, your body just moves differently,” said Morikawa with a laugh. “I still feel great, like everything feels great, everything moves great, but it’s just not as clean as it was. And the maintenance I have to do now is just a little bit more.
“It doesn’t mean I need to do anything crazy. I’m not changing anything really. It’s just getting my body to where I need it to be.”
This week’s setting may help with that. Although this marks Morikawa’s Mayakoba debut, he said he fondly recalled playing golf in Cabo San Lucas as an amateur and compares golf in Mexico to teeing it up in Hawaii.
After a stretch of travel that included Japan, South Carolina, and now Mexico, the easy-going vibe at the World Wide Technology Championship may be just what the doctor ordered.
“You do a lot of business when you’re out on the golf course but you’re able to really separate yourself and enjoy the time away,” he said.
“I think what’s so great about when players come to a resort like this… they’re able to stay near the beach and kind of do other activities that force them to get away from the golf course. I think all great players have to do that.”
Morikawa is certainly one of those great players. And despite not feeling 100 percent about his results from 2022, there’s hope for good things to come yet.
“It’s a grind, but that’s what’s great,” said Morikawa. “Even though we are kind of heading towards this offseason, this fall area, I’m putting a lot of pieces together and putting a lot of work in to make sure this next (2023) is going to be as best as ever.”
