Plenty of folks in Japan will be fixated to a television screen or their phone Saturday morning. Including Max Homa and Collin Morikawa.
The duo is teeing it up this week in the 2024 Zozo Championship, but they’re far from the only Los Angeles Dodgers fans in Japan. That’s thanks to Shohei Ohtani, the best player in baseball, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a standout pitcher.
With Game 1 of the World Series against the New York Yankees beginning in California around the same time as the third round of the 2024 Zozo Championship will begin across the Pacific Ocean, fans in Japan will also have their eyes fixated on Dodger Stadium.
“Obviously we have two Japanese players on the Dodgers that are
tremendous, one of which is Ohtani, who is the best baseball player I’ve ever seen,” Homa said. “So it’s quite cool to come here. I’ve actually seen quite a few L.A. hats. It’s quite neat to be in Japan when the best baseball player in the world is Japanese and he’s on the team I root for. It’s kind of a dream scenario.”
The time difference makes for coffee baseball in Japan, which gives fans plenty of time to cheer for the Dodgers (or Yankees) before spending the afternoon on the golf course cheering on some of the best players from the PGA Tour.
“It’s been great watching the Dodgers play in Japan, in Tokyo. It was nice because they had it on TV. You wake up in the morning and it’s on,” Morikawa said. “They’ll probably be playing I’m guessing when we’re out on the golf course, but we’ll be taking a peek here and there for sure.”
It won’t be a shock to see fans keeping the players informed while waiting on tee boxes or walking down fairways. And even with a seven-figure payday on the line, Homa isn’t afraid to show his Dodgers’ fandom.
“I would be lying if I said I wish I wasn’t home a little bit so I could go to the game, or a game, but yeah, it’s neat to be here,” Homa said. “I’m hopeful to see some more L.A. hats. And yeah, it’s been great, the run they’ve been on, it’s been very fun to watch.”
The Zozo might have the coolest promotional images on the PGA Tour.
The 2024 Zozo Championship is up next for the PGA Tour. It’s the first of three straight international events on the FedEx Cup Fall series schedule.
Collin Morikawa is returning to defend his title in the 78-player, no-cut field at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba, Japan. Also in the field: Rickie Fowler, Joel Dahmen, Max Homa, Will Zalatoris, Justin Thomas, Sahith Theegala and Japanese national hero Hideki Matsuyama.
It’s the sixth Zozo Championship since launching in 2019 when Tiger Woods won the inaugural event.
Four of the five previous Zozos were at Accordia Golf Narashino with the exception being 2020, when it was held at Sherwood Country Club near Los Angeles due to the COVID pandemic.
The Zozo has a total purse of $8.5 million and a first-place prize of $1.53 million.
Also, the Zozo Championship might have the coolest promotional images on the PGA Tour.
Asked to name the word that best summarized his season, Morikawa said, “Winless.”
ATLANTA — After Collin Morikawa fell four strokes short of catching Scottie Scheffler at the 2024 Tour Championship, he was asked to name the word that best summarized his season. “Winless,” he said with a faint smile.
Morikawa posted a final-round 5-under 66, reeling off six birdies after an opening-hole bogey to finish second and bank $12.5 million in bonus money. Morikawa started the tournament six strokes back in the staggered start and cut the deficit to two strokes with a birdie at No. 8 before Scheffler poured in three straight birdies and made an eagle at 14.
“I knew he wasn’t just going to come backward, and I still had to make a lot of birdies,” Morikawa said.
It was his seventh top-five finish of the season, which speaks to the number of times he was in contention, but failed to hoist a trophy. Morikawa, a six-time Tour winner with two majors to his credit, said he’s only going remember the victories. The 27-year-old former Cal Bear took some solace in winning the “ghost leaderboard,” shooting 22-under 262, the lowest score for 72 holes at East Lake Golf Club without the starting strokes. That was a stroke better than Sahith Theegala and two better than Scheffler on the gross leaderboard.
“It’s nice,” he said. “I knew that was kind of the goal for the week, right, to come out on top on this kind of fake leaderboard and see how things played out.”
Later, on Instagram, he joked, “Signed up for the gross division, forgot to sign up for the net.”
But there’s no trophy associated with it (though he will get the most Official World Golf Ranking points). To collect more hardware for his trophy cabinet he’s going to have to play better final rounds.
“That’s what it comes down to,” said Morikawa, who in addition to the Tour Championship played in the final pairing at both the Masters and PGA Championship as well as RBC Heritage and Memorial. “Those final rounds bit me in the butt.”
He’s made impressive strides to improve his biggest weaknesses. He ranked ninth in Strokes Gained: Around the Green this season, up from T-88 last year and 152nd the season before that. Likewise, his putting was a career-best T-62 this season, up from 114 last year and a dreadful 178th in SG: putting in 2021. Of course, his sterling iron game dipped to 41st in SG: Approach the Green this season from second, third and first the previous three seasons.
“Irons might have been close to my weakest part this year,” he admitted. “Irons I think are the biggest asset of a golf game that you can have. I think Scottie shows that. I’ve shown that in my first few years. Look, if I can dial it in and get back to who I was before and even better now, it’ll be hopefully a fun 2025.”
And one in which he returns to the winner’s circle again.
“Golf is hard, and he’s figured out how to make it easy.”
ATLANTA — Randy Smith was speaking about his star pupil Scottie Scheffler when Scheffler’s mother, Diane, swooped in for a hug. But as he accepted her embrace, Smith answered the question about what he learned seeing Scheffler overcome the dreaded shank at the eighth hole in the final round of the 2024 Tour Championship and bounce back with three straight birdies and go on to win the title and the FedEx Cup for the first time with a winning score of 30 under.
“A lot,” Smith said, his eyes growing wide.
He still remembers when Scheffler was seven or eight years old and he would grow increasingly frustrated when he would do everything in his power correctly but the ball would take a funny bounce or would hit a spike mark and go off line. Scheffler couldn’t understand it. Smith said it took time, but he learned to control what he can control and appreciate that golf is not a game of perfect.
“Golf is hard,” Smith said, “and he’s figured out how to make it easy.”
Scottie Scheffler lines up his putt on the fifth green during the final round of the TOUR Championship. (John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports)
Indeed, Scheffler has, making five birdies and an eagle at East Lake Golf Club to shoot 4-under 67 on Sunday and beat Collin Morikawa by four strokes in the FedEx Cup finale to remove any doubt of who is the PGA Tour Player of the Year. Scheffler became the first player to win seven times in a single season – eight according to Scheffler, who counts the gold medal at the Paris Olympics – since Tiger Woods in 2007. In the last 40 years, Scheffler joins Woods, who did it four times, and Vijay Singh, who won nine times in 2004.
No less than Adam Scott, the 44-year-old veteran who experienced Tiger’s prime and finished T-4 this week, said Scheffler’s season was worthy of comparisons to some of Tiger’s best work.
“I think it is on par with those great years of Tiger’s. I think it’s very hard today for anyone to separate themselves as much as Scottie has. I don’t think we’ve seen that in a long time. I think it’s harder to do it today,” he said.
Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee argued Scheffler’s game from tee to green has been every bit as good as Tiger in his prime. “I never thought I’d be able to say that – Tiger Woods was a much better putter…what we (saw) this week is Tiger Woods-type putting,” he said of Scheffler, who ranked third in Strokes Gained: Putting this week.
Just a few weeks after Rory McIlroy suggested on national TV that Scheffler should consider using a mallet putter, he switched to a TaylorMade Spider in March, and the putts started to drop. When Scheffler, already the game’s most complete player, putts well, it’s not a fair fight.
“I made a lot of putts this year when I really needed to,” he said. “I think of the putt to win Memorial, I think of some of the putts I made over the week at the Players and the putts I made on the back nine Sunday at the Olympics. I made some putts this year when I really needed to, and that’s why I’m sitting here with a lot of wins instead of a few.”
Scheffler entered the Tour Championship at No. 1 in the FedEx Cup standings for the third consecutive year and began at 10 under in the staggered start, two strokes clear of Xander Schauffele and as many as 10 ahead of the last man in the 30-man field. With rounds of 65-66-66, he enjoyed a five-stroke lead heading into the final round, and with Morikawa making bogey at the first and Scheffler sinking a birdie at No. 2, his lead grew to seven. But that seemingly commanding advantage began to shrink. Scheffler made three bogeys in a four-hole stretch beginning at the fifth and concluding with the world No. 1 shanking that ball from a greenside bunker at No. 8.
“You can see it in his body language right now,” NBC’s Jim “Bones” Mackay said. “He is shaken up.”
Very surprising were the words Morikawa used to describe the shot. He pounced, rolling in his birdie putt for a two-stroke swing to cut the deficit to two. All the momentum had shifted. But one of Scheffler’s super powers is his ability to only look forward.
“He went back to work,” Smith said.
“It almost brought his focus back in for a half second, and that’s something you can’t teach. You just either have it or you don’t,” Morikawa said.
It looked as if Scheffler, who blew a six-stroke 54-hole lead in the 2022 Tour Championship to McIlroy, was reeling. A pep talk from caddie Ted Scott helped settle his nerves. Morikawa wasn’t surprised what happened next: “He played Scottie golf.”
Scheffler drilled a 4-iron at the par-3 ninth to 3 feet and made birdie. He birdied the next two holes to stretch the lead to five. That’s what the greats do. Just like he did down the road at Augusta National Golf Club in April, he sucked all the drama out of the closing holes.
Scottie Scheffler celebrates with wife Meredith and their son Bennett after winning the 2024 Tour Championship. (John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports)
In a year in which he welcomed the birth of his first child, a son Bennett, and stretched in a Louisville jail cell before the second round of the PGA Championship at Valhalla, Scheffler collected his 13th Tour title, tying him with a group that includes Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and David Duval. That included another major championship, his second Masters title, and he also won the Players, becoming the first player to win the Tour’s flagship event in back-to-back years. He also claimed four signature events: the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the RBC Heritage, the Travelers and the Memorial.
“He’s the guy to beat every single week,” Justin Thomas said. “I don’t think people understand how hard that is to do, when you’re expected to win, when you’re the favorite to win, when every single thing you’re doing is being looked at, good and bad, on the golf course, and how hard it is to get in your own little zone and own little world and truly just quiet the noise. It’s something that is just as much of a skill as being able to hit a driver in the fairway or an iron on line. He’s clearly figured that out very well.”
Scott has tried to figure out Scheffler’s secret sauce, which included ranking first in 40 different statistical categories measured by the Tour – among them first in greens in regulation (73 percent) and putting average (1.69). No player had led both categories in a single season since 1980. (In 2000, Woods was second in putting average.)
“I’m observing all the time everything he does. I switched to his golf ball this year. I did a bunch of stuff just to see what’s going on. But I didn’t find it,” Scott said.
Aaron Rai, who made it to East Lake for the first time this season, has been keeping close tabs on Scheffler’s relentless play and run of dominance and offered a different take on what makes Scheffler special.
“His biggest strength is his outlook and his perspective on life,” Rai said. “To be able to maintain that level of golf under the pressure of being world No. 1 and the attention that surrounds him every week and to be able to play his best golf at No. 1 shows a different dimension to his game.”
Schauffele, who with two majors enjoyed a breakthrough season and finished T-4 at the Tour Championship, has witnessed Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, McIlroy and Jon Rahm take their turn at No. 1, but what Scheffler has done stands alone.
“I think by the definition of dominance, I think that’s literally where he’s sitting,” Schauffele said. “They were kind of punching back and forth between 1, 2 and 3. Scottie has just been at the tip-top of the mountain for, what, two full years now it seems.”
Schauffele, Scott, Morikawa and the best players in men’s golf will get another shot next season to knock Scheffler from his perch, but none of his success surprises CBS analyst Colt Knost, who watched Scheffler blossom into the best in the world from a young age.
“This is what he does,” Knost said. “He’s been a winner his whole life, and I don’t see him slowing down any time soon.”
“We’re going to be doing as much as we can throughout these playoffs and the next couple of months to help out some great kids.”
MEMPHIS – In the heat of the FedEx Cup Playoff race, Collin Morikawa is staying true to the principles of the PGA Tour’s FedEx St. Jude Championship’s title sponsors.
Morikawa has pledged to donate $1,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for every birdie he makes throughout the three-event playoffs. During Thursday’s first round at TPC Southwind, he recorded five birdies.
For Morikawa, who is part of the golf apparel company TaylorMade’s team of professionals, it’s the continuation of a commitment to St. Jude that he shares with his wife.
“My wife is going to be running the New York Marathon, and we’re going to be trying to raise as much money as we can for St. Jude, so that’s her charity beneficiary for the marathon,” Morikawa said. “I think everything that’s piling on, it’s all coming together, whether it’s FedEx and TaylorMade, St. Jude, ourselves, and my family.
“We’re going to be doing as much as we can throughout these playoffs and the next couple of months to help out some great kids.”
FedEx teamed with TaylorMade to create a custom playoff-themed golf bag that Morikawa showcased Wednesday. The bag is crafted with upcycled FedEx packaging materials and TaylorMade golf gloves. Along with his birdie pledge, Morikawa will use the bag during all three FedExCup Playoffs events.
FedEx is also matching Morikawa’s $1,000 donation to St. Jude for every birdie or better that he achieves while using the bag throughout the playoffs.
“A really special bag. Really cool,” he said Wednesday. “It’s obviously very meaningful, not only how it’s built. You have recycled gloves on the side, recycled materials. Someone said there’s a part of a FedEx truck in it.”
Morikawa, fourth in the FedEx Cup Playoff standings with 2,456 points, finished Thursday’s first round at 2-under-par 68. He finished his second round Friday at 1 under, shooting a 71 with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 14 and 15.
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“You don’t play with a legend like that and a great player and not ask him any questions.”
Penny Hardaway stared intently, studying Collin Morikawa from the tee box on No. 18 at TPC Southwind in Memphis Wednesday.
Memphis basketball’s head coach – and a legendary NBA figure – was the pupil this time.
“I never asked him one golf question until we got to No. 18,” said Hardaway, who was part of the group playing with Morikawa during the pre-FedEx St. Jude Championship pro-am. “I was saying to him, ‘Out of respect, I have to ask you some questions about the game.’ Because you don’t play with a legend like that and a great player and not ask him any questions.
“So, he gave me some information and I hit a great drive and a great second shot onto the green.”
So, what exactly did Morikawa coach Hardaway up on and what was his evaluation of Hardaway, the golfer?
“He’s really good. He’s actually really, really good,” Morikawa said. “I think he had a handicap of 2 today. He made some legit − I think he made two actual birdies, like normal birdies without his handicap. He was striping it.
“He’s such a tall guy, and that’s obviously how basketball players are, and he’s had, I think, six knee surgeries, so he asked me on 18 something he could work on just about rotation and getting it around the corner a little bit better. He hit some balls out to the right. Look, it was impressive. I didn’t know what to expect, and sometimes you see a 2 handicap and they’re not a 2, but I actually believe him. He’s a great player, and just a great guy to hang out with for nine holes today.”
Hardaway said Morikawa isn’t the only high-level athlete’s brain he’s ever picked.
“It’s the same with how I feel when I’m around legends of the game of basketball or whatever their sport is,” Hardaway said. “Just to ask them, ‘What makes you great?’ ‘What do you think about out there?’ All that goes into me coaching as well. You keep feeding for information, it kinda motivates your guys.”
Apart from the free lesson from the two-time major winner, Hardaway relishes the opportunities he gets to be on the golf course – especially when it involves two of the biggest pillars of the Memphis community in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and FedEx.
Hardaway describes golf as his “peace,” even though he downplays his skill level, describing it as “not even close” to those of the professionals. He said he never envisioned himself taking up the sport while he was blistering the competition on the hardwood as a teenager at Treadwell or a young adult with the Tigers.
“Not once,” he said. “In my neighborhood, it was all about basketball, football and baseball. Never about golf. Even though we had Chickasaw Country Club in our neighborhood, we never even thought about it.”
Hardaway will get a chance to play another round at Spring Creek Country Club in Collierville on Thursday at the Danny Thomas Celebrity-Am. He said he will also be back at TPC Southwind as a spectator for the FedEx St. Jude Championship throughout the weekend.
Commercial Appeal sports writer Josh Crawford contributed to this report Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or follow him @munzly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.
TaylorMade has not released any specific information about the irons.
Collin Morikawa won the 2021 British Open at Royal St. George’s Golf Club using a blended set of irons that consisted of TaylorMade P•770 (4), P•7MC (5-9) and P•730 (PW) irons. During the seasons that followed, he kept using blended sets that often included some prototype P•7CM irons (with the CM standing for Collin Morikawa).
After tinkering with some prototype cavity-back irons throughout the spring and summer and adding a prototype 4-iron to his bag starting at the Wells Fargo Championship, Morikawa debuted what appears to be the next generation of better-player, cavity-back irons from TaylorMade last week at the RBC Scottish Open, and they are in the bag this week at Royal Troon.
The yet-to-be-released P•7CB irons are, cosmetically, similar to the P•7MC irons that have been in the TaylorMade lineup for about a year. TaylorMade has not released any specific information about them, so we don’t know if there has been a change in the blade length, the width of the topline or sole geometry, which are all things elite players focus on. However, while Morikawa’s irons appear to have the same general shaping at the muscle-cavity P•7MC irons, and the P•7MC irons had milled faces, the yet-to-be-released P•7CB irons have clearly-visible milling over the entire hitting surface while the P•7MC irons do not.
Collin Morikawa’s TaylorMade P•7CB irons have milling marks over the entire hitting area.
Is that a big deal, possibly. While high-handicap golfers are usually happy just hitting straight irons shots, low-handicap golfers and elite players want irons that create spin so they can cut, draw and shape the ball around the course. While the milling lines may be cosmetic, it’s possible that TaylorMade is trying to enhance spin, and thereby give good ballstrikers like Morikawa, more control.
Collin Morikawa’s TaylorMade P•7CB irons have a narrow sole and very little offset.
Entering this week’s British Open, Morikawa ranks a solid 39th on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green (0.39), but that is down from his season-ending rank of No. 2 (1.012) in 2023.
PINEHURST, N.C. — After a tough-to-swallow 74 pushed him closer to the cutline than the top of the leaderboard on Friday, Collin Morikawa rallied on Saturday to post an impressive 66 that had him within five shots of the leaders before they teed off.
How’d he do it?
Whether it felt so or not, Morikawa used the best statistical putting day of his career in pulling back to even par for the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.
“I think I putted better at the Open, to be honest. The Open I made everything when I won in ’21,” he said of his victory at Royal St. George’s, the second major win of his career. “Numbers don’t lie. I’ll take that. I mean, look, after yesterday’s round, didn’t really do much. I just felt like they were getting really bumpy yesterday late in the day. They got a little crusty. Sometimes they just don’t fall. Today I just kind of made sure I stuck with everything that we’ve been working on.
“It was nice to see the first one go in and build off that.”
Morikawa posted three birdies on the back nine and while many were struggling with the course’s dome greens, he seemed calm and comfortable. The former Cal star hasn’t won since capturing the Zozo Championship last October, but he’s been consistently in the mix, placing in the top 10 in five of his last seven starts, including a runner-up finish at the Memorial last week.
On Saturday he executed his plan to perfection in trying to get back into the conversation.
“I was trying to get to even,” Morikawa said. “You can’t be aggressive out here. I think if you’re aggressive, it can put you in really bad spots. You got to just kind of take your 30-footers. If you have a wedge, sometimes you’re able to go at pins. Didn’t play the par 5s as well as I have been. Look, you can’t play aggressive out here at all. You play aggressive to the right parts, you take what you can. If you get lucky, you get lucky.”
Now that he’s played his way back within striking distance, what is the game plan?
“To win,” he said definitively. “I mean, look, if I play the way I did today, who knows what could happen. This course is only going to get tougher. I know it’s not going to be easy.
“Today was not easy by any means. I just put it in the right spot, kept the ball in front of me, really just played very simple golf.”
We saw that in the first round of the 2024 U.S. Open on Thursday, with some golf balls that looked pretty good … until the hard, fast greens chewed them up and spit them out.
That happened to Collin Morikawa on the par-3 ninth hole, playing 186 yards in the first round. He hit out of a greenside bunker and watched as his ball didn’t bite at all.
Instead it rolled. And rolled. And rolled … all the way off the green.
After his round, he was asked if he was surprised that that happened.
“No. A lot of the bunkers, they’re very different. Some have a lot of sand, like the one on 17 had a lot of sand, the one on nine had less sand. I wasn’t surprised. I hit a bad shot,” he said. “I flew it halfway and I was trying to barely land it on the green are. But that’s just where any other circumstance you feel comfortable if you did fly it that far. This is one of those courses where you literally take your medicine, and if you have eight feet for par, you have eight feet for par, versus making double and I’m 30 yards away from the hole.”
He was 55 feet from the hole in the bunker but 77 feet away after his ball finally came to a stop. A two-putt from there gave him a double-bogey 5 on the hole.
The shot-by-shot of Collin Morikawa on the par-3 ninth hole during the first round of the 2024 U.S. Open.
We saw that in the first round of the 2024 U.S. Open on Thursday, with some golf balls that looked pretty good … until the hard, fast greens chewed them up and spit them out.
That happened to Collin Morikawa, who hit one from the sand and watched as it didn’t bite at all. Instead it rolled. And rolled. And rolled … all the way off the green.
Here’s Morikawa’s shot that rolled forever, along with some others who had trouble with the greens early in the first round:
