2023 Zozo Championship leaderboard, grades: Collin Morikawa ends drought with dominant performance
Collin Morikawa’s nearly two-year winless streak ended resoundingly on Sunday at the Zozo Championship in Japan. He shot 63 in the final round to blow away the field while beating Eric Cole and Beau Hossler by six strokes each.
The 63 was Morikawa’s best round of the week, but it was also his third score of 66 or better over the course of the four days in Japan. It’s his first win on the PGA Tour since the Open Championship in July 2021, and his first victory anywhere since November 2021.
It did not always seem as inevitable as this score makes it look.
Morikawa actually started the day two back of leader Justin Suh but went out in 30 to grab a healthy lead going to the second nine. He closed with a clean card and a 33 on that side of the course to cruise to the victory.
“It was incredible,” he said. “Yeah, it feels incredible. Every win’s so different, and every experience, whether it’s winning or losing, you learn a lot, but this one just meant the world.
“Obviously having this kind of two-year drought, you know, just struggling at times, not really contending, to do what I did through this entire week, Thursday, Friday, and then how I started my round yesterday with a double bogey, that’s the golf I miss playing. To see that and to see it again, it’s very exciting kind of just to close out this year and head into next year.”
Morikawa’s play has not been as poor over the last two years as his lack of wins — or sometimes his own rhetoric — would make it seem. He has 16 (!!) top 10s since his win at the DP World Tour Championship on the DP World Tour in November of that year and has nearly won a handful of times. Starting December 1, 2021, he is No. 4 in the world in strokes gained ball-striking and No. 10 in strokes gained overall.
He just hadn’t won, which can often be the result of luck or circumstance. This six-stroke victory, in some ways, could have been a handful of one-stroke victories.
“They weren’t doubts [about whether I would win again],” he said. “It wasn’t like I didn’t believe I was going to have another win or whatever, when that was going to happen. It was just more about when it was going to happen, right? I think the thoughts in your head start piling up of like, ‘OK, well, what did I do differently, what do I need to change?’ I think that’s when sometimes people go too far in one direction.
“I haven’t really done too much, to be honest. I had to take two steps back and really understand the foundation of what made me so solid of a player, you know, say in ’19, ’20 and ’21, and I really did that after we finished [FedEx Cup] Playoffs. Not that I took two steps back, but sometimes you have to understand from a very basic level of why does your golf game work, right? And I think I stuck to that this week.”
Sometimes golf, especially for the best players, is an exercise in the discipline of continuing to do what they’re doing, even when the results are not there. It takes a trust that they will come. It seems as if that is ultimately what Morikawa landed on with a touch of swing work mixed in.
Whatever the formula, the drought is over and one of the best young players in the world is primed for what should be an interesting 2024 season. It might not get all the attention, but Morikawa takes some real momentum into the end of this year and the beginning of next as he tries to reestablish himself as truly one of the best players in the world. Grade: A+
Below are the rest of our grades for the 2023 Zozo Championship.
T6. Min Woo Lee (-6): Find me somebody who’s playing better global golf right now than my hitter Min Woo. You can’t. T5 at the U.S. Open, T9 at the Travelers, T7 at the Irish Open, a win in Macao. OK, maybe he’s not the hottest player in the world, but he’s so much fun to watch and currently ranked No. 35 in the Data Golf rankings, which is 10 spots higher than his Official World Golf Rankings spot of 45. Grade: A
T10. Justin Suh (-5): It was a tough final round for last year’s Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year. He shot 74 to Morikawa’s 63 and dropped from first to nearly out of the top 10. Still, the week was an encouraging one. Suh didn’t have a top 10 since the Players Championship in March and had been scuffling quite a bit since the summer. This finish helps solidify his spot in the FedEx Cup Fall (up to No. 77) and should give him some real confidence going into the next few weeks. Grade: A-
T64. Rickie Fowler (+7): It was a tough week for Fowler, who only broke par one time over the four-round event. He has been decent but not amazing since his win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic this summer, and while I’m still mostly excited about the direction he’s headed in, the last two months have given me at least a bit of pause after that victory in Detroit seemed as if it lifted the top off the defense, so to speak, and opened up the field for him to make some noise. Grade: D
