Collin Morikawa comes undone, Jon Rahm roars home, Xander Schauffele exits early, Augusta National extends a welcome invite and more in this season-opening edition of the Monday Scramble:
In his short but spectacular career, Collin Morikawa has developed a reputation as a quick study.
He graduated on time from Cal’s prestigious Haas School of Business despite playing a busy, global amateur schedule. He won on the PGA Tour in his sixth pro start. And he captured two majors, a World Golf Championship, the Race to Dubai and a handful of other events before his 25th birthday.
But Morikawa has always been dogged by a suspect short game and putter, and those areas couldn’t be fixed virtually overnight. The result was what we saw Sunday at the Sentry Tournament of Champions: Staked to a six-shot lead, Morikawa stumbled through one of the easiest stretches of the entire Tour season and shockingly coughed up a chance to win for the first time in 14 months.
There is no doubt that Morikawa has made strides to address those glaring deficiencies. But what unfolded at Kapalua was hard to watch: the missed 10-footers, the thinned bunker shot, the flubbed pitches. A too-little-too-late birdie on the final hole gave him a final-round 72 – three-and-a-half shots worse than the field average, and the second-worst score of the day. Though Morikawa went bogey-free for the first 67 holes, that was the opening a red-hot Jon Rahm needed to storm from behind with a Sunday 63 to steal the first title of the new year.
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Source: www.golfchannel.com
