PGA Championship Recap: Wowza, Morikawa!

Collin Morikawa hit a shot for the ages. It was good enough to instantly enter the pantheon of seismic shots in major golf history. A few minutes later, he hit another one – an even better one.

With as many as seven golfers tied for the lead on the back nine, and just about everyone expecting a playoff, Morikawa broke from the pack with an incredible display of pressure-filled shot-making to win the 102nd PGA Championship at Harding Park on Sunday for his first career major title.

Not only was there not a multi-man playoff, Morikawa won by more than one stroke – by two over Paul Casey and, alas, Dustin Johnson. He shot a 31 on the back-nine to conclude a 65-64 weekend, and that 129 total was the lowest final-36-hole score in PGA Championship history (breaking a record held by, yes, Tiger Woods).

At only 23, and having played in only two career majors, Morikawa continues to astound just a little more than a year after turning pro. He is now up to No. 5 in the world rankings and can ascend to No. 1 in just two weeks at the first playoff event, The Northern Trust at TPC Boston, according to noted OWGR expert @VC606 on Twitter. (For now, place-holder Jon Rahm is back on top by the slimmest of margins after a one-week trade-off with Justin Thomas, 8.7820 to 8.7708.)

Morikawa took the lead for good, oddly enough, after a bad iron shot on No. 14. It left him off the green and 54 feet from the hole. But he turned a difficult wedge shot into perfection, sending the ball right into the cup for birdie when bogey was definitely in play. After a par at 15, he stepped to the tee at the drivable 294-yard 16th, and this shot will be remembered forever. His drive lasered its way onto the front of the green, nestling seven feet from the hole. He drained the putt for an eagle, effectively ending all the remaining drama just a short time after there was mind-boggling drama.

This would be a good time to talk about Morikawa's putting. He began the week ranked 164th on Tour. We all remember his nervous 3-foot miss in the playoff at Colonial. Well, at Harding Park he uncharacteristically finished outside the top-15 in every SG category but one, and was even 41st in his wheelhouse, SG: Approach. The one outlier was putting. He actually led the field, gaining almost seven strokes on the weekend alone.

Really, if he's going to do that with any regularity, then everyone else is gonna be playing for second place for a long time.

TPC Harding Park

Some thoughts on the tournament in general before getting to the player recaps:

• As thrilling as Sunday was, the course was a bit too easy for a major -- a winning score of 13-under-par is pretty big for a major. To further the point, among the top 28 finishers, not one of them shot over par Sunday. You have to go all the way down to Brooks Koepka at T29 – snicker, snicker – to find someone who shot over par.
• There were no fans in attendance – though there were a lot of people on site, right? – yet it did not detract from the drama one iota. Sure, the roars would've been astounding. Can you imagine what they would've sounded like on those Morikawa shots?
• The PGA of America maintained the old cut standard of top 70 and ties, not the PGA Tour's current top 65 and ties. But with 20 guys tying for 60th on Friday, that made no difference – this year.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Brooks Koepka
This was major karma for Koepka – get it, major karma? Seriously, though, Koepka missed a par putt on 18 on Sunday that cost him a top-25. Okay, that wasn't serious either. But now seriously: There was only one golfer in the field who shot worse than Koepka's 74 (thank you, Jim Herman). The top 28 finishers shot 70 or better. He lost shots in every SG category. This was a really bad round. For the week, he lost shots off the tee, ranking 56th. Koepka noted afterward that this was "my first bad round in a while in a major." Yes, Brooks Koepka clearly thinks an awful lot of Brooks Koepka. The only thing that went right for him on Sunday was that neither Dustin Johnson nor Bryson DeChambeau won.

Dustin Johnson
DJ is now working on a second Silver Slam – take that, Brooks. Johnson has had a star-crossed, Greg Norman-esque career in majors, which will always be viewed as a negative – great but not great enough. But it appears that all these close calls have not beaten him down, and he could be back on a major leaderboard as soon as next month.

Paul Casey
For someone so often overlooked, Casey has had a pretty darn good career in majors. Of course, he's never won, but he now has 10 top-10s, and this co-runner-up was his best showing ever. On Sunday, he played about as well as he can play. He gained strokes putting and ranked 37th for the week. That's about as close as he can come to Brad Faxon.

Tiger Woods
He closed with a 67, his best round of the week. We heard about his putting troubles, but his whole game was lacking. He was top-25 in the field in only one SG category (approach, 25th). You'd think that the super long major tracks would be his worst chance to win another major, but he was actually ninth in distance and 29th in accuracy. Still, his best major chance, and maybe his only true chance, remains Augusta. We'll probably see Woods next in two weeks for the start of the playoffs at TPC Boston, where he's won. He's 47th in the point standings, so he has plenty of work to do to get to East Lake.

Bryson DeChambeau
He shot 66-66 on the weekend and finished tied for fourth – sometimes you just have to tip your Ben Hogan hat. It was a great week for DeChambeau, by far his best showing in 15 career majors. He'd never had a top-15 before. It's not hard to see that his time is coming.

Jason Day
The second act of Day's career is still showing. He now is riding four consecutive top-10s. He has had a great, great career in the PGA – and all majors. This was his third top-5 in the PGA and he now has 16 career-top-10s in majors. After falling out of the top-50 in the world, he's now back up to No. 32. (Take note, Jordan Spieth fans?)

Tony Finau
Finau did not lose this tournament. Shooting 67-66 on the weekend is the exact opposite. He was third in SG: Tee-to-Green but, more importantly, 30th in putting. On the season, he's 81st on Tour in putting, well above average. If Finau isn't too dinged up in the head by all this can't-win talk, he'll get there eventually, even in a major.

Matthew Wolff
I was pretty hard on Wolff early in the restart. But he's clearly turned a corner, with great finish after great finish. He had the lead ever so briefly on the back nine, and he wound up tied for fourth with the best round in the field on Sunday, non-Morikawa division. Wolff is up to 36th in the world, not in Morikawa territory but right on the heels of Viktor Hovland.

Scottie Scheffler
This was only Scheffler's second major as a pro (fourth overall). He missed the cut at last year's U.S. Open. He has shown all season long that he was a lot more than just the top Korn Ferry grad. This was his best finish ever in terms of OWGR points, and he's back inside the top-50 in the world.
 
Cameron Champ
It was a gallant effort for 3-plus rounds for Champ, who showed that he was not quite ready to truly contend in a major (read: back-nine on Sunday). Still only 25, there's no shame in that. With his tie for 10th, Champ is up to a career-best 68th in the world rankings.

Haotong Li
Li had a bad round on Saturday, for sure, but he acquitted himself nicely by playing under par on Sunday to tie for 17th. We need to remember that Li is 25, and just turned 25, and this was his third career top-20 in a major. He slumped badly after rising to No. 32 OWGR; he's now back inside the top-100.

Sergio Garcia
He missed the cut. Since winning the 2017 Masters, he has now missed the cut in eight of 12 majors, with nothing inside the top-20. Did he make a deal with the devil for that Green Jacket?

Joohyung Kim
The 18-year-old Korean sensation made his first appearance outside of Asia. So naturally, it was his first major. He missed the cut, which was predictable, even for a teenager who has soared inside the top 100 in the world.

Cameron Tringale
You don't see too many DQs in majors. Tringale now has two. He was DQed on Friday for signing an incorrect scorecard; he would've missed the cut regardless. His first DQ was at the 2014 PGA at Valhalla and, get this, it came a week  after the tournament. According to Golf Week, a "guilt-ridden" Tringale contacted the PGA of America with what sounded like a similar scenario to what happened to Rickie Fowler the other day – taking a first stab at a putt before actually tapping it in. Tringale DQed a week later, costing him $53,000 for his tie for 36th.

Club Pros

All 20 missed the cut this year, and it wasn't even close, and that doesn't happen often. Three of them made the cut last year.

The Top 125

It's hard to believe how fast this season is gone. There's only one tournament to go before the playoffs begin, and golfers need to find themselves within the top 125 of the FedExCup Standings to qualify. Right now, all these guys are outside the top 125: Zach Johnson, 129th; Shane Lowry, 131st; Matt Wallace, 132nd; Rafa Cabrera Bello, 133rd; Sergio Garcia, 134th; and Danny Willett, 143rd. All are playing this week's Wyndham Championship. It should be noted that since the playoffs were instituted, an average of only 2.6 players have climbed inside the top 125 at the last-chance event, and the most ever has been five. So it's likely not all of them will get in.