10 Facts About Collin Morikawa

2 days ago

Transcript

00:00The term rising star might be a bit patronising for a golfer of Colin Morikawa's ability.

00:06A double major winner by the time he was just 25 years old,

00:10golf's rising star has arguably already risen and will no doubt continue to ascend to the very, very top through his career.

00:17But still a fresh face on tour, let's get to know more about one of the best ball strikers currently on tour.

00:23The son of Debbie and Baleen Morikawa, Colin was born in Los Angeles, California and is of Chinese-Japanese descent.

00:33Much of his father's side of the family are from Hawaii and he still has many relatives who live there today.

00:39Despite having no living relatives currently in Japan, he recently visited the country for the very first time.

00:46He said,

00:53And I felt that this is where my heritage and my life had started.

00:57Morikawa had an unbelievably decorated amateur career.

01:01He played his collegiate golf at the University of California in Berkeley from 2015 to 2019,

01:07winning five times, including the 2019 Pac-12 Championship.

01:12Aside from these pretty historic collegiate wins, he won the Western Junior Trans-Mississippi Amateur,

01:18Sunny Harner Amateur and North-East Amateur Championships during his career.

01:23Finally, all before he turned pro, he played on the winning Arnold Palmer Cup team in 2017 and 2018

01:29and was also on the winning Walker Cup team in 2017.

01:33Understandably, with this much success, Morikawa was ranked the number one amateur in the world in May 2018.

01:40He then turned professional in 2019 at the RBC Canadian Open.

01:45He finished tied 14th on debut and followed that up with a tie for second place at the 3M Open

01:52and then a tie for fourth place at the John Deere Classic.

01:56With that finish, he secured his PGA Tour card for the following season after just three events on tour.

02:02Not content with that though, Morikawa then won his first PGA Tour event at the Barracuda Championship just a few months later.

02:10Safe to say, he's not looked back from there.

02:12Speaking of beginnings, and Colin Morikawa had one of the most decorated starts to a PGA Tour career in history.

02:18He did this by making 22 consecutive cuts.

02:21That record is only bettered by one Tiger Woods, who did it 25 times.

02:26Morikawa became the first American to win the race to Dubai on the then European Tour.

02:31He won the yearly order of merit thanks to his win at the 2021 Open Championship as well as winning the DP World Tour Championship right at the end of the season.

02:41At the time of recording, Morikawa has won two of golf's majors and he won them both on his debut appearance.

02:48In 2020, he won the PGA Championship at Harding Park in California and then in 2021, he won the Open Championship at Royal St. George's.

02:57By winning these two majors on debut, he became the first male golfer to achieve that feat.

03:02He is currently engaged to his long-term partner, Catherine Zhu.

03:06The pair met in 2017 while both at college and Zhu herself played collegiate golf at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles.

03:13Morikawa is a big sports fan outside of golf, closely following both baseball and basketball.

03:19Being a local to California and LA, his baseball team is the LA Dodgers while he supports the LA Lakers in basketball.

03:27The course he grew up playing on is called Chevy Chase Country Club, also in California.

03:32It's a truly fascinating little golf course which has just nine holes with 10 different greens and 36 different tees.

03:39The course didn't have a driving range, so Morikawa did all of his practice out on the course, making up his own holes on the very unique layout.

03:47And finally, did you know that Colin Morikawa loves cereal?

03:52Yes, he loves cereal so much that he has the names of his favourite cereal brands printed on his wedges.

03:58So if you take a look at the back of his 56 degree wedge, he currently has printed on it Frosted Flakes, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Captain Crunch and Cocoa Puffs.