Cantlay charges to victory at the Memorial

Like Jordan Spieth in 2015, Collin Morikawa is riding too much confidence, skill and mojo to be bothered by nerves, history and learning curves. Like Justin Thomas, Morikawa has the kind of enviable swing that looks incapable of producing a bad shot. And like Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, Morikawa, 23, joins an elite club of players to capture the PGA Championship before his 24th birthday. His final five holes won’t soon be forgotten. Drawing upon exquisite skill and perfect timing, Morikawa chipped in for birdie on the par-4 14th hole before hitting possibly the shot of the year – a perfect, left-to-right drive that bounded to seven feet for eagle at the par-4 16th – to rise above an impossibly crowded leaderboard. For more on Morikawa’s eagle, click here. Now second in the FedExCup, behind Thomas, Morikawa will be a favorite in the Playoffs and beyond. Welcome to the Monday Finish. THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS 1. Morikawa is comfortable in California. Actually, comfortable is an understatement. While he can win anywhere – the PGA was his third PGA TOUR victory – he has really impressed others on the West Coast, as a lengthy profile on PGATOUR.COM detailed earlier this year. “There are no holes in his game – at all,” said Maverick McNealy, a rival when he was at Stanford and now a friend with whom Morikawa plays and practices at home in Las Vegas. In a way, Walter Chun, Morikawa’s coach at Cal, predicted this back in January. “I think he’ll win at Torrey Pines or Riviera to start the year,” said Chun. “He’s a West Coast kid, he knows poa annua greens, and he’ll be motivated to win. When he wants to accomplish something, he tends to do it.” Chun was not quite right with the timing, but the rest of it looks about right. 2. He has the head of a caddie. Steve Desimone, who recruited Morikawa to Cal, said he never saw Morikawa pull the wrong club. J.J. Jakovac, who worked for Ryan Moore before landing Morikawa’s bag last year, considers Morikawa so golf-smart it’s like he’s another caddie. “It’s unbelievable,” Jakovac said at TPC Harding Park. “It really is. I’m in awe still watching him play. All my caddie friends say the same thing. They’re like, ‘I just cannot get over how mature your guy is.’ He’s like an old soul or something. He’s just plodding along and he just knows what he needs to do. The confidence is a quiet confidence but it’s super confident, you know.” Said runner-up Paul Casey of his first impressions of Morikawa last year: “Instant maturity was probably the one thing that stood out.” 3. He learned to be a player, not just a swing. Morikawa’s first lessons, when he was 5, came at a junior camp at Scholl Canyon in Glendale, California. Rick Sessinghaus, who focused on the mental game, taught the better players there. You could say it was a fruitful partnership. Sessinghaus, who has a doctorate in sports psychology and is the mental performance coach for UCLA’s golf team, recognized Morikawa’s excellent fundamentals but didn’t stop there. Their lessons came to include copious on-course problem-solving. What was the percentage shot? Where was the best miss? How could he play to his strengths? “There’s a lot of great swings out there but not many golfers,” Sessinghaus told PGATOUR.com earlier this year. “He learned to play at a high level. Collin’s been wired that way; I’ve tried to cultivate it, raise his golf I.Q. by putting him in different situations. “He’s going to look at a golf course and create a strategy based on his capabilities. He’s not going to overpower it but can plot his way around based on his strengths.” OBSERVATIONS Casey, Koepka pull reversal The cameras were on Brooks Koepka, not Paul Casey. Just a few shots back as he eyed a potential third straight PGA title, Koepka came in with ample swagger. Alas, Casey (66) thumped Koepka (74) by eight shots, and by the end of their rounds the cameras were on the Englishman, a flip of the script that was more than a little surprising. “Today was just sort of cruise around the golf course and have a great time,” Casey said. “I’ve not played great golf so far this season, so anything was going to be a bonus on where I was a week ago or two weeks ago. So I was just out there kind of having a good time. “But I do think I’m in a sweet spot,” he added. “It’s taken me 43 years to get there, but yeah, pretty chilled out, know what I’m capable of, and enjoying my golf.” As for Koepka, he shrugged and smiled and said he was just there to cheer Casey on. “You know, hey, wasn’t meant to be,” said Koepka, who finished T29 at 3 under par. “Three in a row, you’re not really supposed to do two in a row looking at history, but that’s all right.” DeChambeau, Finau put on show They hit epic tee shots, but they didn’t win. No matter. Bryson DeChambeau was unphased. For one thing, he shot a final-round 66, and for another, his T4 was his best finish in a major. “It’s super validating,” he said. “I don’t know how else to put it. Very excited for the future for me. Look, my driving I think is only going to get stronger and farther, golf-course-dependent, obviously. But I hope in due time there’s going to be an advantage that’s out there that, you know, hopefully – I don’t know how else to put it in a nicer way, but gives me a really distinct advantage that helps me win a lot out here. I feel like my putting is good enough. “I just have to improve the irons and wedges a little bit,” he added. Finau, meanwhile, shot 67 to also finish T4 – another close call for the one-time TOUR winner. “I had so many, so many great looks that I thought I made, and just slid by,” he said. “… I felt like just try and get to double digits as fast as you can, and hopefully from there you have some holes left to make some more birdies. I did that. I got to 10-under, I think after 14, and had four holes in front of me that I felt like if I got a couple, I would have a great chance, and gave myself some looks.” QUOTEBOARD “I didn’t realize how much I actually missed this area.” – Southern Cal product Morikawa, who graduated from Cal-Berkeley, just across the bay from TPC Harding Park “There’s nothing I would change. I’m very, very happy with how I played.” – Paul Casey (66, 11 under, T2) after thumping final-round playing partner Brooks Koepka “You know, I was just there to cheer Paul on.” – Brooks Koepka, who was in contention for a third straight PGA Championship win but shot a final-round 74 (T29) WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is a season-long competition that offers a $10 million bonus for the 10 golfers who end the regular season at the Wyndham Championship inside the top 10 in FedExCup points. The player atop the standings will earn $2 million, with varying payoffs for the others through $500,000 for the 10th place finisher. Justin Thomas remains at No. 1 with a 556-point lead over new No. 2 Collin Morikawa. With 500 points available to the winner of this week’s Wyndham Championship, that means Thomas has clinched the victory in the Wyndham Rewards Top 10, while the remaining nine places remain up for grabs. This is the last week before the start of the FedExCup Playoffs. Here’s how the standings look heading into this week’s Wyndham Championship: SOCIAL SNAPSHOT

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Rory McIlroy flirted with a hole-in-one on the same par 4 where Tiger Woods hit out-of-bounds with his first shot in Mexico. That’s about how their days went Thursday in the WGC-Mexico Championship. McIlroy, already off to a solid start on the back nine, hit a 2-iron on the 305-yard opening hole at Chapultepec Golf Club that landed on the front of the green and was rolling just left of the pin when it settled 6 feet away, leading to an eagle that carried him to an 8-under 63 and a one-shot lead over Dustin Johnson. Woods got the raucous Mexican introduction for his opening tee shot, a 5-wood that also landed on the green — the wrong green. The ball bounced hard off a temporary green to the left and beyond the out-of-bounds stake into the bushes. And then he nearly did it again, and ultimately had to get up-and-down from 60 feet away in a bunker to escape with double bogey. After a burst of birdies, he struggled to make much the rest of the way and opened with a 71. “I pulled across it to try and cut it and hit it dead off the toe,” Woods said. “Hit both of them dead off the toe.” McIlroy’s 2-iron was the signature shot in an exquisite start to this World Golf Championship. He was 6 under through an eight-hole stretch in the middle of the round, and a 20-foot birdie on No. 8 toward the end of his round is what gave him the lead over Johnson, who played in the group behind. It was his second straight week with a 63. “I wouldn’t say it was easy,” McIlroy said. “I hit a lot of good golf shots, but I left myself a lot of tap-ins for birdies. As 63s go, I shot 63 at Riviera last week, but this felt probably a little more stress-free.” He described his 2-iron as close to perfect, just how he envisioned it, a little cut to take off some distance in the thin air of Mexico City. The only blemish on his round came at the par-5 sixth, when he pulled his tee shot into the trees and looked as though he would have to punch out back to the fairway. Standing over the ball, McIlroy was looking up. He saw a gap between two trees with a tiny limbs, so even if he clipped one, his 8-iron should have been enough to give him a reasonable shot at the green. There was one limb that concerned him, which McIlroy described as “something a dog would pick up.” “The one branch it could not hit, it hit,” he said. “It all levels out at the end of the day. I’m just in a good frame of mind, managing my game well, putting went good. And if you putt well, it takes pressure off the rest of your game. And that’s where it’s at.” Johnson won the WGC-Mexico Championship two years ago, part of three straight victories during the best stretch of golf he ever played. Johnson said he struggled with his swing at Pebble Beach and Riviera, and worked all week on the range in Mexico. “It’s starting to feel the way it did two years ago,” he said. Much like McIlroy, there wasn’t a lot of stress in his game. Johnson only missed three of the tree-lined fairways and was rarely out of position except on No. 12, where he lost his drive well to the right. He had no shot to the green, so he tried to put it in the bunker. It went in and out of the bunker, onto the fringe and he holed the putt from 20 feet for his third straight birdie to start the round. He also had back-to-back eagle putts, driving the first green to 20 feet and hitting driver on the 383-yard second hole over the trees and onto the green — as Bubba Watson was putting — to 18 feet. He made birdie on both. “I feel like I’ve got this altitude thing figured out,” he said. Justin Thomas, who lost in a playoff last year to Phil Mickelson, chipped in from 50 feet behind the green on No. 15 for eagle and was at 66. He was tied with Matt Kuchar, who already won in Mexico once this season at the Mayakoba Classic. Jordan Spieth, with his father filling in because caddie Michael Greller’s father died, opened with a 75. Woods was fortunate he only started with a double bogey. He didn’t realize immediately that his first tee shot was out-of-bounds, and he had reason to think his second tee shot would turn out the same. “It was on the exact same line,” Woods said, who added he thought for a second, “This could be a pretty big number.” He had to play from the bushes to punch it into the bunker, and blasted out to a foot for his double bogey. After his stretch of three straight birdies got him under par, he twice missed par putts from about 4 feet, though he holed a 15-foot par putt on the 17th. He summed up his round aptly: “Got off to a bad start. Got it going after a little bit there, made three in a row. Couldn’t make any birdies after that for some reason. It is what it is.” Mickelson, two weeks removed from his victory at Pebble Beach, could relate. He bogeyed three of his first four holes on the back, shot 40 on the front and opened with a 79.

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