Collin Morikawa wins Pebble Beach Pro-Am a decade after Cal debut

PEBBLE BEACH – Collin Morikawa’s tap-in birdie putt secured his first AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am championship Sunday and, quite fittingly, ended a madcap final round full of lead changes.

Morikawa, a decade after debuting at Cal, celebrated with a modest fist pump and wiped tears from his eyes. More tears soon flowed.

After a long hug with his wife, Katherine Zhu, he revealed on the CBS post-round interview that she is pregnant with their first child, due in May.

Morikawa said of his emotional release: “It’s a combination of everything. It’s probably more the baby than the drought of winning. I didn’t know how I was going to react.”

After all, he hadn’t celebrated a win since October 2023 in Japan, long after capturing his first two majors — the 2020 PGA Championship up the coast at TPC Harding Park and the 2021 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s.

Morikawa, a 29-year-old Los Angeles native, kept an eye on the ever-changing scoreboard before finalizing a 5-under 67 for a tournament-best 22-under score.

He got his first taste of Sunday’s outright lead with a 30-foot birdie on hole No. 15. He had watched as three others were unable to hold it earlier in the round, all while world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler shot the day’s low score of 9-under 63 with the awe-inspiring assist of three eagles.

“I was very aware of Scottie Scheffler’s score today. What a player. It’s cool to kind of go head-to-head against him,” Morikawa said. “I love looking at leaderboards. I want to know where I am.”

He found himself gazing into Carmel Bay while enduring a 20-minute delay on the 18th fairway, before striking his final three triumphant strokes.

Prompting that delay was beachcomber Jacob Bridgeman, who failed to cleanly hit off the shoreline flanking the 18th green en route to bogey.

“I was walking left and right vs. straight down the fairway. I tried to think about anything else other than golf,” Morikawa said. “Thankfully you had the nicest backdrop you could ask for.”

Bridgeman, earlier in the day, was out in front of the 80-man field, having seized the lead from Akshay Bhatia. Later, Sam Burns found himself as the outright leader after a 12th-hole birdie.

Morikawa pushed past them all on the 15th hole by rolling in a 30-foot, uphill birdie putt. He also birdied the 16th for a seemingly comfortable two-stroke cushion. But he pulled his 17th tee shot into the rough en route to a bogey, all while Min Woo Lee birdied the 18th to move into a tie for first with Morikawa, both at 21-under.

“Go Bears!” a Cal fan shouted as he stepped onto the 18th tee box.

“A lot of pacing for me, to keep me loose because, shoot, it wasn’t warm by any means,” said Morikawa, who may have been lucky like the others to avoid a forecast rainstorm, though the wind did gust after Bridgeman’s delay.

Morikawa drilled the tournament’s final tee shot 290 yards into the fairway. Eventually, after the long wait, he soared a 232-yard approach shot just onto the green’s front-right fringe, where his ensuing putt left him only 16 inches to finish off for a tournament-clinching birdie.

“I won’t forget the aristry that was there,” Morikawa said. “The way I played today was different from Thursday.”

He opened 3-under at Spyglass Hill, which inspired him to replay YouTube videos of his swing. Then came a 4-under round Friday at Pebble, and because he was 10 off the pace, that cast doubt on plans to publicly announce his impending fatherhood.

“We talked about announcing it if I was going to win,” Morikawa said. “After Friday I was chalking it up to saying, ‘Maybe next time.’”

Instead, he drank some wine, changed to a “spinnier” golf ball, and focused on getting back to playing his style of golf rather than mimicking others’ swings, a bad habit he’d developed over the years.

Saturday, 11 birdies shot him up the leaderboard, so “I started the day this morning, ‘Let’s go win this thing,'” Morikawa said.

Left in a tie for second place were Lee and Sepp Straka, followed by Scheffler and Tommy Fleetwood in a fourth-place tie.

Scheffler eagled the 18th hole to create a four-way tie atop the leaderboard. It was his third eagle of the day – the first such hat trick after 550 rounds – and that collection offset his three bogeys, each of which followed a birdie.

Scheffler trailed by two strokes before unleashing a 6-iron on his 18th-hole approach, leaving just 2 feet, 7 inches for an eagle putt that was slightly complicated by wind gusts flapping his navy pants. It was a stirring run to complete a three-day rally after Thursday’s opening-round 72, and it secured a top-10 finish in his 18th straight PGA Tour event.

As Scheffler was rehashing his round on the CBS telecast — “I had to do something special today to give myself a chance,” he said – Morikawa made his birdie on No. 15. That left Scheffler in second with Burns and Bridgeman.

Scheffler opened 7-under through seven holes. He was in a four-way tie atop the leaderboard before a 15th-hole bogey.

Bhatia entered Sunday with a two-stroke lead in his bid to become only the tournament’s third left-handed champion, following Phil Mickelson’s fifth win in 2019 and Ted Potter Jr.’s in 2018. Bhatia struggled to an even-par finish and tied for sixth with Burns.

Defending champion Rory McIlroy saved his best round for last, carding an 8-under 64 and tying for 14th. He birdied four of his first six holes.

“There’s 10 guys that could have won. Just had to do my best,” Lee said. “Yeah, it was a stacked field, which is great to see.”

Added Morikawa: “It’s weird, growing up you think about the majors and you have this separate list of golf courses you just want to play as a kid when you turn professional, and Pebble Beach is exactly atop that list. There’s so much history, it’s very iconic, and one of the nicest places I’ve ever been to in the world.”