Collin Morikawa didn’t know he got to host a PGA Champions Dinner, but he put together a strong menu.
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – The Masters isn’t the only major that has a champions dinner. Didn’t know that? Don’t feel bad; neither did reigning PGA champion Collin Morikawa –“DC” for defending champion as they are calling him this week – who is also the guy who set the menu and picked up the tab. When asked if he was aware of this tournament tradition, Morikawa chuckled and said, “No. But I’m glad it is.”
Much like at the more ballyhooed winners-only Champions Dinner held each year on the Tuesday of Masters week at Augusta National, the ticket to admission to Tuesday night’s soiree at the PGA Championship is having hoisted the Wanamaker Trophy. But there is one difference: Spouses and family members of past champions are included. Morikawa, who said he loves food, had the honor of selecting the menu and he offered plenty of options.
“It was kind of how much food can you just throw at everyone,” he said. “But no, I gave people the option of fish or fried chicken, so either you go healthy or you don’t go healthy.”
Grade B: Nice tip of the cap to TPC Harding Park being the site of his PGA victory last year and who doesn’t like a Cobb salad?
Entrees
Pan-seared Cobia with lemon caper sauce or fried chicken with four-cheese creamy mac n’ cheese
Grade B: I would’ve gone with filets and Chilean Sea Bass, but the only champions dinner I’m hosting is for my fantasy league. The Mac ‘n cheese alone almost brought it into the A range.
“Everyone was loving that, just to kind of pick on,” Morikawa said of the Porterhouse strips and sides. “It’s a great family style, and obviously going through COVID and everything, you’re so used to takeout boxes – maybe I should have given everyone a takeout box and just told them to go eat in their room. That would have been new.”
Grade A: Solid choices. Garlic mashed would’ve made it an A+.
Dessert
House-made ice creams (Vanilla, chocolate, banana), platters of warm chocolate chip and red velvet cookies.
Grade: A. Simple yet delicious. Extra credit for the cookies being warm and everyone may not agree with Morikawa and me here but banana ice cream instead of strawberry was an inspired choice.
Wines
Sauvignon Blanc, Nautilus Estate
Chardonnay, Ceritas
Merlot, Duckhorn
Cabernet Sauvignon, Caymus
Grade: A. I’m not gonna lie, I’m not too familiar with those whites and would’ve gone with Cakebread as my Chard but the reds are strong to very strong.
“It’s an honor to continue the tradition of choosing tonight’s dinner menu. It’s a mixture of selections I trust you will enjoy,” Morikawa wrote on the menu.
“It was just good to have people, like, share food and just have people talk to each other while they passed the plates. I think we all missed that,” he added. “The dinner was just kind of put together, foods that I love, and it was an awesome night really.
“It was so cool to talk to a bunch of champions, not just champions that I know, but just guys that are older that aren’t on Tour anymore, just to kind of hear stories from them. It’s a really meaningful night.”
As for the stories that were told, those will be guarded by Morikawa like state secrets. Asked to share his favorite, he demurred and said, “Well, I’m not going to tell you that.”
The statistics from the 2012 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course provide insight to how the course might play in 2021.
There’s much to learn from the 2012 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island Golf Resort’s Ocean Course as focus shifts to this year’s rendition of the major championship at the same coastal layout in South Carolina.
Much attention will be on Rory McIlroy, who ran away from the field alongside the Atlantic Ocean in 2012 for an eight-shot victory over David Lynn. But what can we learn about the course itself? A few things to start, then seven specific spots of interest from the 2012 hole-by-hole statistics.
First off, The Ocean Course is not as easy as McIlroy made it appear. He finished at 13 under par and alone in double digits under par, with only 20 players total breaking par.
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Second, the fearsome par-3 17th might not be as fearsome as some would assume, in relation to the other par 3s on the course.
And third, players better be ready to go right out of the gate, as the start of the front nine presented the best scoring opportunities in 2012.
Following are more points of interest from the hole-by-hole statistics from the 2012 PGA Championship at the Pete Dye-designed Kiawah Island Ocean Course, which ranks No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access courses in South Carolina.
Rory McIlroy & Justin Thomas are grouped together in the early rounds & they playfully took jabs at each other during their press conference
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Justin Thomas arrived for his 3 p.m. pre-tournament press conference early. So early, in fact, that Rory McIlroy still was answering one last question about how important it was in his career to win his second major at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course in 2012.
“A lot of guys have won one major, but it’s a big hurdle to get to the second. It was good to get that monkey off my back, especially here, playing so well,” McIlroy said staring directly at Thomas, whose lone major came at the 2017 PGA Championship.
“So yeah, it was a big deal,” McIlroy finished, struggling to keep a straight face as Thomas stewed in the back of the open-air tent. “I definitely didn’t want to be stuck on one for a long time, so happy to get that second.”
As McIlroy wrapped up and walked off the stage, Thomas muttered some choice words under his breath, smiled the smile of a man who could take a joke, and said, “Well played.”
It didn’t take long for Thomas to be asked for his rebuttal.
“I can’t really say too much, other than it’s great to see him win. I know it’s been a really long time for him, so I’m glad to see him,” Thomas said.
It was a subtle jab at McIlroy, the recent Wells Fargo Championship winner who had gone some 550 days without tasting victory, and it too deserved a “well, played,” for the return of serve.
“But at the same time,” Thomas continued. “I really don’t want to egg him on because usually when he wins he likes to reel some off, and with a lot of big tournaments coming up I don’t really want to poke the bear.”
What Thomas, who will be grouped in a threesome alongside McIlroy in the opening two rounds, would like to do is find his touch on the green. He putted horrifically at the Valspar Championship in Tampa three weeks ago, losing nearly six strokes to the field over the first three rounds, which prompted him to say that had he putted decently he’d be winning the tournament. Thomas has been working hard with his putting coach, John Graham, to be less mechanical with his stroke.
“Just simplifying it,” he said. “I’m very feel based and very artistic, if you will, in terms of seeing shots and hitting different spins on chip shots, pitch shots, whatever it is, and I need to take that same outlook into my putting.”
Thomas said he did just that at the Wells Fargo Championship.
“Once I tee up, I have to just go be athletic and be artistic and just go out and hit the putts the speed that I want. That’s something I did on Sunday at Quail Hollow, is just tried to be less perfect and just more feel based, and I putted the ball beautifully even with two three-putts there,” he said.
Thomas arrived for the 103rd PGA on Sunday, playing 18 holes, and was pleased he had a chance to play the Pete Dye layout in opposite wind directions. He also picked the brain of Tiger Woods, but said Tiger didn’t have a lot to offer given he finished T-11 in 2012.
“He pretty much hit the nail on the head. It’s long, there’s a lot of crosswinds, and have a good short game,” Thomas said.
Long is selling it short. This will be the longest course to host a major championship at 7,876 yards, surpassing Erin Hills in 2018. Thomas laughed out loud last week when someone sent him an image of the scorecard and he noticed the back nine measured more than 4,000 yards.
“They can’t possibly play it that long. Unless they get a day where there’s absolutely no wind,” Thomas said. “They can’t play 14, that par 3, back if you have this wind today. Guys are going to be literally hitting driver on that hole. Unless the PGA wants seven-hour rounds, I wouldn’t advise it.”
Forget the tale of the tape. Let’s get ready to rumble.
The 103rd PGA Championship begins on Thursday at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course in South Carolina, and with a handful of storylines and groups to watch.
Rory McIlroy won this event the last time it was played at Kiawah Island. That was back in 2012, and was McIlroy’s second career major championship. He has since won two more (including the 2014 PGA Championship). McIlroy will tee it up alongside fellow two-time PGA champion Brooks Koepka (2018 and 2019) and Justin Thomas, winner of the 2017 PGA.
Defending champion Collin Morikawa is grouped with 2020. U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and 2021 Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama.
Here’s everything you need to know for the first round of the PGA Championship.
Bryson DeChambeau went from science to science fiction during a SiriusXM PGA Tour Network appearance when he talked UFOs.
Bryson DeChambeau has said some outlandish things and attempted some gravity-defying shots, but The Mad Scientist recently went next-level in a jump from science to science fiction. DeChambeau was on the SiriusXM PGA Tour Network’s show hosted by Gary McCord and Drew Stoltz last night for a conversation that focused on UFOs and unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs). Yes, you read that correctly.
DeChambeau talks in detail about an experience he (and instructor Chris Como and his friend Adam Hurley) had during the pandemic last year in his backyard in Texas, when he saw “three little silver metallic discs” moving in the distance.
“They were all moving in a triangle shape,” DeChambeau said. “We were out there for literally just under an hour thinking, ‘What the heck is this?’ ”
DeChambeau captured a photo of it and says he went on Instagram Live talking about it. After watching them float there, he said they briefly went inside the house.
— PGA Championship Radio on SiriusXM (@SiriusXMPGATOUR) May 18, 2021
That wasn’t the only experience the DeChambeau family has had. He recounted a close encounter experienced by his brother and a cousin years ago, and experiences his dad had growing up in Nevada, and he sees no conflict between his religious beliefs and UFOs.
“I am a religious man and I don’t think it conflicts with any views from being a Christian,” he said. “God talks about pretty much [what is in] the Bible and Jesus coming down and saving us as humans and I think it’s not excluding all life out there elsewhere. I think He (God) came down and created this book (the Bible) for us, for the humans on Earth. There’s no reason why He couldn’t make other beings everywhere else. … So being a religious man I think that if anything it is just us, from science or religion, trying to explain what God did. I don’t think there are any issues with that. I didn’t think I was getting too deep into it but I really believe there is other stuff out there and it doesn’t affect my faith or anything.”
He’s not convinced that there is existing technology today that can explain some of these phenomena.
“There’s either one person, like a Tony Stark individual, that is doing things that we can’t explain, which is definitely in the realm of possibilities,” DeChambeau said. “I would say the probabilities of that are less than potentially us being future time travelers that are able to come back with technology that we’ve never seen. I mean, that’s definitely a possibility, too. But personally I think that it’s some other life that we don’t understand or know as of right now. I personally don’t think it is other technology that we currently in this dimension understand. Maybe a parallel universe, somebody flipping over and jumping through a worm hole or something and showing us what we got.”
“I think more and more people want to know about this and what it could potentially do for our world,” he said. “I mean, shoot, if anything it could bring us world peace, really honestly bring us all together, unite us together and just realize that we are a human race. I think it’d be the greatest thing that could ever happen.”
Using the rankings, we’ve identified players who are trending heading into this week’s PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.
Looking for a player to pick in your office pool? One strategy is to consider players who have had the most success in the months leading up to this week’s PGA Championship, the second major of 2021.
The entire PGA Championship field is broken down below according to the Golfweek/Sagarins and the Official World Golf Ranking. The left column, or the “heat index,” is a player’s ranking based on his play the past four months. That can help you pick a player who is trending.
So far in the 2020-21 Tour season, the average ranking of the winner heading into the week in which he won a PGA Tour event has been 89.35 in the Golfweek/Sagarins and 96.35 in the OWGR.
Less than a week before trying to qualify for the 2019 U.S. Open, Collin Morikawa had one major detail to take care of: secure the services of a caddie for his upcoming career in professional golf.
One thing quickly led to another, however, and Morikawa was on the phone with J.J. Jakovac, a former aspiring professional who found greater riches in professional golf carrying a bag instead of playing out of one.
After 45 minutes on the phone, Jakovac started planning a trip to Ohio and four days later landed in the Buckeye State to start his new job with Morikawa in a 36-hole U.S. Open qualifier. They hit it off immediately in the parking lot of Scioto Country Club despite the years separating them – Morikawa’s 24, Jakovac’s 38 – and the baseball teams they are devoted to – Morikawa and his Los Angeles Dodgers, Jakovac and his San Francisco Giants.
They’ve been together ever since – for four wins in Morikawa’s 45 starts as a pro.
“As a college golfer coming out, you really don’t know what your caddie is going to be like or what you’re going to need,” Morikawa said. “The only question I asked J.J. was if he’s organized.”
Jakovac was put to the test right away. The day before the Monday U.S. Open qualifier, Morikawa found out he was awarded an exemption into the coming week’s RBC Canadian Open and asked Jakovac if he could go north of the border. Trouble was, Jakovac didn’t have his passport and the few clothes he had packed for Ohio fit into a carry-on.
Collin Morikawa (right) and caddie J.J. Jakovac look on from the 15th tee during the third round of World Golf Championships at The Concession golf tournament at The Concession Golf Club. (Photo: Mike Watters-USA TODAY Sports)
Jakovac got hustling and had his wife overnight his passport and he scrounged up a few extra pieces of clothing for the trip to Toronto.
Morikawa qualified for the U.S. Open and then tied for 14th in Canada with Jakovac walking stride for stride in his professional debut. One month later he tied for second in the 3M Open in Minnesota. The following week he tied for fourth in the John Deere Classic.
Two weeks later, in his sixth start as a pro, he won the Barracuda Championship.
He has since added victories in the 2020 Workday Charity Open, the 2021 World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession and, of course, the 2020 PGA Championship in just his second start in a major.
And Morikawa began his career with 22 consecutive made cuts, a stretch to start a pro career bested only by Tiger Woods’ 25.
“It only took a couple weeks for me to know that J.J. would be great for me,” Morikawa said. “He was a former pro. He was a well-respected, experienced caddie. He learned my game quickly. It just made sense and we just kept feeding off each other.
“I’m not saying we’re perfect every time. We still work on things; we still tweak things here and there. But that’s what makes him great; we’re both willing to learn and we’re both willing to try to learn something new at times and if we fail, we fail. We’re trying to get better. He just loves being there just as much as I do.”
There was a time Jakovac wanted to be there as a player. Playing for California State University, Chico, he was the NCAA Division II individual champion in 2002 and 2004. Three-time All-American. Twice the recipient of the Arnold Palmer Award given to the Division II Player of the Year. And he earned the Jack Nicklaus Award for the best collegiate golfer in the nation in 2004.
He turned pro and traveled golf’s lonely roads on mini-tours and the Hooters, Gateway and Golden State tours. But he failed three times to get through Q-School and started questioning his journey.
“I made some money, did all right, but I was spinning my wheels and was burned out on it,” Jakovac said.
Collin Morikawa (left) and his caddie J.J. Jakovac stride up the on the 15th green during the first round of the Tour Championship golf tournament at East Lake Golf Club. (Photo: Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports)
He took a break and then got a call from Matt Bettencourt, who Jakovac had played against in amateur golf. Bettencourt was looking for a caddie and Jakovac made a career switch. In 2008, Bettencourt won twice on the Nationwide Tour and was the leading money winner with Jakovac on the bag. The two split and Jakovac worked a bit for Peter Tomasulo before hooking up in 2010 with Ryan Moore, a former teammate in the Palmer Cup. The relationship lasted nearly eight years and yielded four victories.
“I’ve always liked having good players on the bag, someone who has that perspective of knowing how to really play golf, how to deal with different shots, different moments and how difficult it can be,” Moore said. “I’ve always appreciated someone who has been there, done that and J.J. definitely had that experience. I think Collin feels the same way.”
Jakovac and Moore split after the 2018 PGA Championship and Jakovac took another break to spend time with his family.
“I wasn’t in a hurry to find another bag,” Jakovac said.
Some time passed before he was smitten watching Morikawa on TV and knowing all about his standout collegiate career, he got in touch with Andrew Kipper, Morikawa’s agent. Turns out it was a fruitful phone call.
“He’s such a nice kid, such a mature kid. It was like after 5 minutes after I met him for the first time that I thought it would work out,” Jakovac said. “After that it was just all about learning his golf game and distances.
“I’ve told people before that he’s an old soul. He has an ability that is way beyond his years, to just go with the flow on the golf course, to understand he’s going to hit bad golf shots. He doesn’t get flustered or frustrated. He still has the fire and he does get mad, but then it’s like he flips a switch and it’s gone.
“It’s so easy to caddie for him. He thinks like a good caddie on the golf course.
He’s already on the same page with me. And he listens. I trust him, and he trusts me. We’re friends. We like each other. That makes it pretty easy to work together.”
Jakovac will tell you Morikawa’s mind is his best attribute, even more so than his supreme ball-striking skills. Among the many moments that stand out occurred at the 2019 John Deere Classic.
In just his fifth start as a professional, Morikawa needed a top-10 finish to lock up his card. Morikawa finished in a tie for fourth.
“On the 18th green on Sunday, I was so happy for him, ecstatic, as he comes over to me. I gave him a half hug, half handshake,” Jakovac said. “I told him he locked up his card and he just said, ‘I know.’ He’s excited but he’s not emotional. I asked him, ‘Aren’t you excited?’ ‘Yeah, I’m excited.’ And then there was a pause for about five seconds when I asked, ‘You knew you were going to do this, huh?’ And he’s like, ‘I thought I was.’
“He expected to get his card in that short of time. He wasn’t over-the-top excited because he expected to do it. That’s special.”
The two are on the same page when Morikawa wants to try new things, whether it be a new putter, putting stroke and learning how to slightly draw the driver.
Morikawa appreciates Jakovac having done that and been there in the grind of professional golf.
“I’m so happy to have him on the bag, so let me say thank you, Ryan Moore, for not keeping him on the bag,” he said. “He’s a person I can talk to on the course and who just keeps it comfortable.
“He knows what to say, when to say it. He has figured out my game and what kind of player I am, what I need to know, what I don’t need to know, and it’s as simple as that. I’m very lucky to have him on the bag.”
Take a look at the hole-by-hole maps provided by Puttview for this week’s PGA Championship at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort.
Kiawah Island Golf Resort’s Ocean Course takes its second turn as host of the PGA Championship this week, welcoming players and fans back to the South Carolina seaside just southeast of Charleston.
The Ocean Course was designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1991 after a somewhat frantic effort to complete construction before that year’s Ryder Cup, which the Americans won over the European team and that has become known as the “War by the Shore.”
Unlike most linksy courses, which play beneath and around the dunes, the Ocean was built atop the dunes at the suggestion of Dye’s wife, Alice. This provides fantastic views of the Atlantic but subjects the players in this week’s major championship to the full force of the coastal winds. Individual holes will play very differently this week depending on the weather.
The Ocean Course is part of the large and charming Kiawah Island Golf Resort, which is home to four other courses: Osprey Point by Tom Fazio, Oak Point by Clyde Johnston, Turtle Point by Jack Nicklaus and Cougar Point by Gary Player. And beside miles and miles of beaches, the resort is home to a five-star oceanfront hotel and luxurious villa rentals, several fun pool complexes, a marina, hiking trails and more, making it a top Lowcountry destination.
Thanks to yardage books provided by Puttview – the maker of detailed yardage books for more than 30,000 courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges that players face this week. Check out each hole below.
The lead-up to the 1991 Ryder Cup, when Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course was hurriedly yet masterfully completed, is one for the history books.
They said it couldn’t be done. And “they” was virtually everybody – from players to team captains to officials, and in a moment of candor, even golf course architect Pete Dye had his doubts.
Build a Ryder Cup venue under the tightest of deadlines from scratch in the middle of swamp and marsh? Why, yes. That’s exactly what they proposed doing. The PGA elected to move the 1991 rendition of the biennial competition from Palm Springs, California, to Kiawah Island, South Carolina. Sounds outrageous? Well, it was. And that’s not even taking into account all the adversity the project faced from environmental concerns to Hurricane Hugo pummeling the three miles of isolated seashore 25 miles southwest of Charleston.
“If you were prone to panic,” said former PGA executive director Jim Awtrey, “this would’ve put you under.”
And yet somehow, despite all the forces seemingly working against it, Dye transformed The Ocean Course into one of America’s premier seaside links courses and the 1991 Ryder Cup was an unmitigated success. Like a sports referee who is celebrated for not being involved in the game’s decision, the incredible story of the preparation of Kiawah’s Ocean Course has been forgotten, replaced by the indelible image of Germany’s Bernhard Langer missing the final putt in the final match on the final hole to give the Cup to the United States. “The War by the Shore” put Kiawah on the map, and its fame has proved to be lasting.
Mark O’Meara and Payne Stewart look on as team captain Dave Stockton pushes Corey Pavin into the water as the USA celebrate on the beach after victory in the Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island in South Carolina. (Photo by Simon Bruty/Getty Images)
The story of how The Ocean Course came to host one of golf’s premiere events is filled with nearly as much drama as the Cup itself. Initially, the 1991 Ryder Cup was scheduled for PGA West in La Quinta, California, as part of a broader licensing deal negotiated between the PGA of America and Landmark Development Co. When Awtrey became the PGA’s executive director in 1987, he expressed concerns whether the Ryder Cup could succeed in the desert in September. It’s a time of year when residents are still hibernating, temperatures soar to 110 degrees, and courses don’t get overseeded until October.
“Add all those things up and it didn’t seem like it was going to be a successful event,” Awtrey said.
Previous accounts have centered on television’s role in the decision to move the tournament. And that is true. Awtrey targeted television as the centerpiece of his strategic plan to grow the PGA. The 1991 Ryder Cup marked the first time the PGA received a television rights fee. As a signal of its rising importance in the golf landscape, NBC signed on as broadcast partner for the weekend telecast with USA Network covering Friday.
The BBC insisted the Ryder Cup was an international event and consideration should be given to the vast European audience, too. A five-hour time difference was bad enough, but eight – if played on the West Coast – would diminish interest. With the lure of 21 1/2 hours of live coverage during prime viewing hours, Awtrey’s board gave him permission to consider moving the event to the East Coast.
Spanish golfer Seve Ballesteros (center) with members of Team Europe during the Ryder Cup matches at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, September 1991. (Photo by Simon Bruty/Getty Images)
So Awtrey visited Joe Walser, Landmark’s co-founder, and the man who gave him his first job in golf. Awtrey ticked off his list of reasons why the event was better suited to be played in the Eastern Time Zone and asked Walser to release the PGA from its contract.
“He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t think we can do that,’ ” Awtrey recalled.
Eventually, Walser offered a solution. Landmark had just purchased a new development in the Carolina low country. There was some skepticism, recalled Pat Reilly, a member of the PGA board at the time, that two years did not allow sufficient time for construction, but the PGA agreed to the move. For the first time, the Ryder Cup had been awarded to a course that didn’t exist.
Instead of an old course they settled for an old architect, joked Dye. Walser phoned Dye, who had designed Oak Tree CC, site of the 1988 PGA Championship, for Landmark in August 1988. When Dye first arrived at Kiawah, he knew he had his work cut out for him.
“I was looking at a swamp and they said, ‘We’re going to have the Ryder Cup here in two years.’ I didn’t say anything. You couldn’t walk into it. It was that bad,” Dye recalled.
Some might have called it impossible to carve a course out of these seaside dunes. But Dye also realized Kiawah’s potential. In one direction were unspoiled ocean views, to the other saltwater marshes. “I’m like a kid with a lollipop,” Dye said at the time. “This is the best piece of land that I have worked on in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Hole No. 6 at Kiawah Island Golf Resort’s Ocean Course
Photographer: Uzzell Lambert
Before long, Dye began pointing out potential holes to Awtrey.
“See Jim, it doglegs off to the right and the green’s up by that mound right there,” remembered Awtrey. “And I said, ‘Pete, I don’t see anything but sand and marsh.’ “
Dye envisioned a routing where the front nine holes would loop counterclockwise to the east and the back nine would loop counterclockwise to the west. He sketched 10 holes of this resort course right along the Atlantic Ocean. After a lengthy permitting process, they turned the first shovel of soil in July 1989. Dye and his wife, Alice, moved to Kiawah. Everything was progressing swimmingly when Hurricane Hugo hit in late September 1989. At the time, the Ryder Cup was being contested in England. From a continent away, Awtrey and his staff watched as Hugo destroyed much of Dye’s design work.
Back at Kiawah Island, evidence of Hugo’s fury was ever-present. Trees had blown down. Access roads were closed. Sand dunes were pummeled. Dye used a rowboat with an electric motor to navigate the course and get fuel and water so they could continue working.
Growing concern resurfaced that the course would never be ready to host the Ryder Cup. Despite the setback, workers patched washouts and transplanted more than a million plants. The core of engineers permitted Dye to reconstruct the dunes line. For months, a battalion of workers toiled nearly around the clock. Dye was often right alongside the laborers, steering a bulldozer, clearing brush, raking a finished green.
The PGA also moved the 1990 PGA Cup matches, a Ryder Cup-format competition for club professionals, from PGA West to Kiawah’s Quail Point in September. With a year to go until the Ryder Cup, this gave European officials a chance to preview the site. To a man, every person who visited the Ocean Course agreed it would never be in proper condition in time. European PGA executive director John Lindsey was the most vocal, informing Awtrey in a meeting that he intended to tell his side to cancel their travel plans.
“That was probably as upset as I got in the early years,” Awtrey said.
It wasn’t just the other side that had their doubts. After the 1991 Masters, U.S. team captain Dave Stockton invited prospective team members to Kiawah. Awtrey tried to persuade him to wait. The course had just been seeded and the greens weren’t ready. Word could spread that the course wasn’t either. Stockton came anyway.
Pete Dye during construction of the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Bradley S. Klein)
What the players didn’t know was that Bermuda grass grows quickly in the south. By September, the course was ready. Team member Raymond Floyd called The Ocean Course “a masterpiece.”
“It looked like a million dollars,” Dye said.
When Awtrey attended the 1991 British Open in July, he brought 8×10 photos that showed the clubhouse facility was complete and serving meals. A newly constructed four-lane road was paved a few weeks before the Ryder Cup got underway. Under great duress, everything fell into place.
“Could we do it today?” Awtrey said, noting how big the Ryder Cup has since become. “No way.”
But they did. Against all odds. And it made for a fantastic finish, as well as the future site of the Senior PGA Championship in 2007 and the PGA Championship in 2012 and this week’s 103rd PGA.
“Everything was going against it,” said Joe Steranka, a senior director under Awtrey at the time of the 1991 Ryder Cup who later replaced him as executive director, “and yet somehow they pulled it off and it became one of the great spectacles in all of golf.”
A dozen years have passed, but the conversation remains vivid in the scholarly mind of Rick Sessinghaus.
The noted golf instructor in Southern California who was giving 50-60 lessons per week back then, especially to those in the junior ranks, sat down next to his wife, Kathy, in their Burbank home. After talking about how each’s day went, Sessinghaus began chatting about one of his star pupils.
Not an 18-year-old stud, mind you. Or a 16-year-old prodigy.
Dial down the years.
“I told my wife I had this kid who had the ‘it’ factor,” said Sessinghaus, a PGA Golf Professional who earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Speech Communications and a Masters and Doctorate in Applied Sports Psychology. “I told her I really believe he is going to succeed at the highest level.
“And he was 12 at the time.”
His name? Collin Morikawa.
A 16-year-old Collin Morikawa competing on the AJGA in July 2013. (AJGA photo)
Add another Masters in Prophesy to Sessinghaus’ list of degrees, for the youngster grew up to be a monster in the junior, collegiate and professional ranks.
Sessinghaus was right there at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco in August 2020 when Morikawa won the PGA Championship, his first major triumph in just his second try, which is his biggest victory of four on the PGA Tour in just 45 starts.
“I didn’t say that flippantly,” Sessinghaus said. “There are plenty of kids who can hit the ball. That’s the baseline stuff. I just told her I had a 12-year-old who askes a lot of great questions, is super competitive, has a great attitude, is curious, whose parents were supportive but not getting in the way. His parents and Collin weren’t obsessed with winning at the time.”
Instead, Morikawa was passionate about learning how the mind works and how to check a chip shot and move the ball both ways. Sessinghaus realized that when they met for the first time shortly after Morikawa blew out eight candles on his birthday cake. Yes, Morikawa was 8 and Sessinghaus was 33 when they shook hands for the first time.
An Odd Couple? Only in age. Their kinship quickly took hold as much for each other’s love for the game as for their thirst for knowledge.
“I was on the right side of the driving range at Scholl Canyon Golf Course when his dad walked over to me and asked if I’d work with his son,” Sessinghaus said. “Collin was with him and he had this big smile on his face and his cute little golf bag. And after two swings, I said, ‘You bet I will work with him.’
“I could tell right away his engagement for his lessons. He was attentive, somebody who was very coachable, and would think things out. He wasn’t a huge talker, by any means, but when he talked, he had very good questions.
“He was very attentive, he wanted to learn, and he had that at a very early age.”
Collin Morikawa during his time on the Cal roster. (Photo: Eric Miller)
Morikawa was of the same mind as his much older instructor. He tapped into Sessinghaus’ ABC’s of mindset principles and appreciated him knowing the X’s and Y’s of the golf swing and being able to play the game at a high level.
“What was appealing with Rick was he was always competitive. As an 8-year-old, I was really competitive. I always wanted to compete against anyone. Rick brought that out of me even more,” Morikawa said. “At all our lessons, we always finished with a contest, whether it was putting, chipping, hitting a shot, whatever it was.
“We did that forever and ever and ever.
“As an 8-year-old you’re trying to beat Rick, who is your coach, and it just kept me wanting to become better, trying to find ways to beat him. I never made an excuse that he was older and could hit it farther. I just wanted to beat him.”
Sessinghaus, now 49 (Morikawa is 24), said he learned early on his young pupil had the makeup to understand and train for being in a flow state, otherwise known as being in the zone.
“Somebody’s DNA in flow states is someone who is completely in the present moment,” Sessinghaus said. “One of the flow triggers for focus is curiosity. What that means is if I can look at a situation in a curious way, it actually takes fear out of the equation. I just want to learn about the present moment. Some people are more wired like that than others.
A young Collin Morikawa competing on the AJGA. (AJGA photo)
“Collin had an interesting mix. He was curious yet creative. He certainly wanted to know the causes and effects of how A+B=C, but he processed it in a way that I think is best for an athlete, which is creative and athletic and not trained to be perfect. He wanted to understand the why. Once he got that answer, it was awesome. I’ve always told him if I don’t have the answer, I will find it for him. He knew I was never going to BS him.”
And Sessinghaus quickly learned Morikawa never played the victim.
“We constantly assessed a tournament not on why he won or didn’t but what did he learn. When he was 16, he played in a tournament at PGA National where they play the Honda Classic, and he came back and said, ‘Rick, I played poorly because I don’t know how to flight my irons in the wind,’” Sessinghaus said. “He said, ‘We need to learn how to flight my irons.’ He wasn’t the victim because it was windy. He took ownership. He never made excuses. That was different.”
The connection grew by the day and remains as strong as ever. And both are continuing journeys to better places.
“The best thing Rick brings to me is his thirst for knowledge, his quest to learn new things and get better,” Morikawa said. “Yes, we’re trying to get better at what we are great at, but Rick is looking for things we’re not great at and try to get better in those areas, whether it deals with the mental process or the golf swing. We’re always trying to gain an advantage.
“I just want to observe and learn and know as much as possible with what’s going on around me. Whether I love the topic or not, if I’m in that situation, I want to learn about it. I want to know how something works; I want to know the history of something. That’s just kind of how my brain works.
“I’m a pretty observant person. So is Rick. So it’s a perfect match.”
