Sincere, straightforward, and emphatic. This is how Collin Morikawa expressed himself after finishing in third place at the Augusta Masters: “Greed got the better of me”. The American was referring to the two mistakes that had condemned him to not fight for victory in the last seven holes of the tournament: “On hole 9, I can’t fail there and leave the ball back in the bunker and, on hole 11, I tried a too perfect shot (the ball ended up in the middle of the lake)”. Two mistakes settled with two double bogeys that made him lose ground he could not recover.
For the winner of two Majors, these were especially painful mistakes as he is a player known for keeping his cool: “I can’t fail like that. I haven’t done it in the past, but that’s the game. Today was the first day that, mentally, I failed a couple of times. It happens sometimes. The few times I’ve been near the top in the Majors, I’ve done pretty well. Today I lacked a bit of balance between the feelings of the game and the mental”. The sincerity of a player who had just missed the fight for his third Major is appreciated.
However, Collin Morikawa’s week cannot be overshadowed by these two mistakes. The Californian has excelled in golf this week and in the first eight holes on Sunday he was very close to making a splash in the standings: “My feeling is that I was putting well, and that at some point they would start to fall in, but they didn’t. If I make a couple of those, many things change. Who knows how it would have ended, but that’s what you have to do when you’re in the final round of a major championship and you start the day one stroke down”.
Collin’s game is approaching its best level and Morikawa himself attaches great importance to what has happened with his game in this Augusta Masters: “We have fitted many pieces of the puzzle this week, and after seeing Scottie this week, I know what I have to do if I really want to close this gap in what he is doing and how impressive he is playing”. He sees himself close, knows what he needs and has regained the confidence to go for it: “This week has been very important for me, and I think it will help me a lot in this stretch of the season, especially because the majors come one after another”.
For Scottie he only has words of admiration. Scheffler is a year older and they have played together since they were juniors. They know each other very well and the respect for the World Number One is total: “It’s impressive what he’s doing with all the clubs in the bag. In the junior era, he was always a great short game player. His chipping and putting were always excellent. I knew he was going to get out of all this mess he was going through with the putt, but seeing what he’s doing with the irons is impressive. He hits all the shots well, moves the ball in both directions, and that’s something I admire and hope to recover in my game. It’s impressive how he’s playing now. The distance he hits and how well he hits the irons, he never gets into trouble”.
Collin feels he is one step closer to Scheffler. In the coming weeks, we will know if he is right.
