It’s perhaps a harsh assessment to say that a golfer who played in the Ryder Cup a couple of months ago is suffering a decline.
But scratch a little beyond that basic fact and it’s a fair to ask how a player who won two of his first eight majors now hasn’t won any event on American soil for approaching five years.
The man in question is Collin Morikawa.
The Californian is still regarded as an elite performer, but could he fall into the category of a prodigy who burned bright at the start but whose star is gradually fading?
Let’s start at the Ryder Cup and work backwards.
Morikawa flops at Bethpage
It was a week to forget for the Americans in New York despite a rally in Sunday’s singles.
But when the dust had settled, the results were stark. No-one on the American side performed worse than Morikawa.
He played three matches but emerged with just half a point.
That’s a stark contrast to the last time the Americans hosted. That was at Whistling Straits in 2021 when Morikawa played four matches, won three, halved the other and ended the week as the joint-second highest scorer for Team USA in their crushing win.
Perhaps of most concern was that his Bethpage flop didn’t come as a surprise.
Ahead of the opening day, Datagolf ran the numbers and found that Morikawa and Harris English were ranked 132nd out of the possible 132 optimal foursomes pairings for the USA.
And so it played out. They were sent out twice and lost twice.
After Morikawa had been given a wildcard pick ahead of the event, Golf365 gave this verdict: “Morikawa is a pick on reputation but is his form really good enough? The jury is very much out. In his final 14 starts of the season, Morikawa managed just a single top 10: a low-key eighth in the Rocket Classic. Add in his lowly ranking of 141st for Strokes Gained: Putting and Morikawa isn’t the lock that many had him down for.”
Morikawa in the majors
Morikawa won the 2020 PGA Championship on just his third major start.
On his eighth, he celebrated by winning the Open Championship on his debut in the tournament.
From the 2020 PGA to the 2022 US Open, Morikawa played in nine majors. He won two, was top five in three others and also had an eighth in that stretch.
That’s a remarkable run.
It took Tiger 12 majors as a pro before he had two in the bag.
Morikawa was on a ridiculous trajectory.
But fast forward to this year’s majors and there are further signs of a decline.
Morikawa finished 14th at The Masters, 50th in the PGA Championship, 23rd in the US Open and missed the cut in the Open Championship.
Caddie changes hint at trouble
Changing caddie is commonplace in every golfer’s career.
Tiger has done it several times and the circumstances can vary wildly.
But when someone changes their bagman five times in one year, that seems like a cry for help.
Morikawa did just that.
After splitting with longtime caddie JJ Jakovac in April, he then went through four more: Joe Greiner, Billy Foster, KK Limbhasut and Mark Urbanek. He finally settled on the latter for the Ryder Cup.
That all suggests muddled thinking as he tried to find the elusive spark
World rankings fall
At the end of 2024, Morikawa was 4th in the Official World Golf Rankings.
He’s now 10th, which shows a fall but it’s not exactly a sharp one.
However, the OWGR don’t take into account LIV performances and operate a two-year rolling system which can be slow to pick up decline.
Many in the game now see the Datagolf World Rankings as more accurate. They do accept LIV results and give more weight to more recent results.
On Datagolf, Morikawa now finds himself down in 27th, one place below England’s Aaron Rai.
Check his rankings graph and the fall is steep.
Morikawa in his own words
So what does the man himself think of his most disappointing year since turning pro?
Here’s what he said after ranking his play after finishing a rather modest 14th out of 30 at the season-ending Tour Championship.
“Same as the year. There was some good, some bad, some surviving. That’s kind of how the year has been. Just have to make some changes. As much as I don’t want to change, I have to change.
“These are frustrating years where I feel like I come into it with a positive attitude and look back at it and say, man, what could I have done better? That’s just who I am. A little unfortunate to finish out the year like this.
“Just got to keep digging. Wake up every day and just keep figuring it out.”
Morikawa’s last win on American soil was the 2021 WGC-Workday Championship in Florida in February, 2021.
True, he landed The Open at Royal St George’s in England later that year and did win the PGA Tour’s ZOZO Championship which was held in Japan in 2023.
But his drought now looks set to run into 2026.
Time is very much on Morikawa’s side – he’s still only 28 – but with more and more young talent emerging, it will only get harder to capture that early magic.
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