Viktor Hovland wins Puerto Rico Open for first PGA TOUR victory

The Cal Bears had done fine, under the circumstances. Missing two players, one of them at Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada Q School and the other tending to a family obligation, the Bears finished fourth at a tournament at rival Stanford last March. The prevailing drift: Fourth wasn’t bad, all things considered. Collin Morikawa wasn’t having it. “He called me out on it,� recalls Cal men’s golf coach Walter Chun. “It was one-on-one, very respectful. He taught me a lot about being a coach. He’s so driven; it’s part of what made him the player he was, and what makes him the player he is.� To wit, Morikawa could have been content, upon getting his Business Administration degree at Cal last spring, to aim only for a spot in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. Instead, he finished T2 at the 3M Open in just his fourth PGA TOUR start as a professional, earning Special Temporary Member status, and won the Barracuda Championship three weeks later, qualifying for the Sentry Tournament of Champions (T7 last week) and earning a two-year exemption on TOUR. Morikawa, who joined Cameron Champ, Adam Long and Matthew Wolff as players to win last season in their ninth career start or earlier, will be among the players to watch at this week’s Sony Open in Hawaii. His paternal grandparents were born in Maui, and he spent so much time in Hawaii growing up, on family visits and for other special occasions, he says he feels right at home. His control game might be a better fit for cozy Waialae Country Club than Sentry’s brawny Kapalua, and it speaks to his lofty reputation that no one would be shocked if he wins. That goes for this week, and most any other week, too. “There are no holes in his game – at all,� says Maverick McNealy, a rival when he was at Stanford, a teammate when they played in the Palmer and Walker Cups, and now a pal with whom Morikawa plays when home in Las Vegas. “He’s very nice, respectful, humble. But I think that humility comes from confidence.� How good is Morikawa? At the fall’s Safeway Open (T10), he shot a second-round 64 in which he made seven birdies from inside 10 feet. Had he played enough rounds to qualify for statistical rankings last season, he’d have led the TOUR in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and also been in the top 10 in Driving Accuracy, Greens in Regulation, and Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. Says college coach Chun: “I think he’ll win at Torrey Pines or Riviera to start the year. 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.� Only occasionally do you remember that he’s only 22, and graduated just over six months ago. Asked why he was looking at his phone after round three of the Safeway, Morikawa replied, “I’m just looking for what my next pairing will be. It’s still exciting for me.� It might be the only time Morikawa has looked or sounded like a newbie. The head of a caddie J.J. Jakovac won two individual national championships for Division II Chico State. He turned pro, didn’t get through Q School, burned out, and took a job with Ryan Moore. They lasted 7-1/2 years, parting at the PGA Championship last May. Jakovac went home to Napa, California, where he bonded with his 1-year-old son, Bo, as his wife returned to work. He was in no hurry to get back on TOUR. Talents like Morikawa, though, come along all too infrequently. A three-time first-team All-American, he almost won a Korn Ferry Tour event as an amateur, losing a playoff at the 2016 Air Capital Classic. And by May he was ready to go pro. Figuring he was already too late to get the bag, Jakovac, 37, asked an agent friend to help him reach out to Morikawa’s nascent team. “I got very lucky,� Jakovac says. They met at the U.S. Open sectional qualifier in Columbus, Ohio. Morikawa advanced (he later finished T35 at Pebble Beach), and their partnership was born. “The best thing about him is his head,� Jakovac says. “I know the courses, but he thinks like a caddie out there, which is cool. He doesn’t play too conservative; he plays smart. He’s very methodical about the way he plots it around. “I was saying this to someone,� he adds, “and they said, ‘So he’s like a 10-year veteran.’ I said, ‘He’s better than most of those guys.’ In the mental aspect.� Morikawa was asked about this at Kapalua last week. How did he explain his early success, plus that of Wolff, Joaquin Niemann and others? “It’s just a lot of self-belief,� he said. “We believe that we can do it no matter where we are.� To make a food analogy – Morikawa calls out great meals on social media and carries wedges stamped with SOURDOUGH TOAST, BACON, HASH BROWNS and EGGS BENEDICT – if most new pros are a bunch of promising ingredients, then Morikawa comes hot out of the oven with everything baked in. “He was destined to do this,� says Steve Desimone, Cal’s longtime men’s golf coach, who helped recruit Morikawa before leaving the job for health reasons. Desimone, who was at Berkeley for more than 37 years, calls Morikawa “mature beyond his years� and, tellingly, “the easiest kid I ever coached.� Which begs the question: How did he get so golf-smart? How is it that his golf IQ recalls another product of the Southern California golf scene, Tiger Woods? To answer that, you have to talk to Rick Sessinghaus. An unusual path Morikawa’s younger brother, Garrett, 16, is into soccer, not golf. Their parents, Blaine and Debbie, weren’t accomplished players, either. “It’s kind of my own thing,� Morikawa says of golf. “My first lessons were at this mini junior camp at Scholl Canyon in Glendale, the city over from where I grew up. I was 5.� He got the basics from a married couple who taught juniors, but he always noticed the other instructor there, a man on the other end of the driving range. Sessinghaus. He taught better players, and soon enough, Morikawa was tabbed as one of them. “He had some good fundamentals coming to me,� says Sessinghaus, who has a doctorate in sports psychology and is the mental performance coach for UCLA’s golf team. “I work heavily on the mental side and course management and strategy. “With Collin, at an early age, we were doing a lot of our lessons on the course.� What was the percentage shot? Where was the best miss? How could he play to his strengths? More than mechanics, these problem-solving sessions became the focus. “There’s a lot of great swings out there but not many golfers,� Sessinghaus says. “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.� From age 8 through high school, Morikawa met with Sessinghaus weekly. (When he went to Berkeley, they sometimes worked over the phone.) Morikawa’s swing was so fundamentally solid, they put even greater emphasis on the mental side. The on-course problem-solving wasn’t just a series of theoretical exercises; as much as he could, Sessinghaus tried to create the stress of actual competition. “I believe development has to be done on the golf course to learn how to compete, to deal with pressure, to learn how to think,� he says. “The competitions at the end of a lesson were, ‘Hey, you have one ball and one ball only, let’s see what you do.’ “It was a bunker shot,� he adds, “closest to the pin, a wedge off a downslope, a par 3. A lot of it was trash talk. You’d win and say, ‘OK, I got you.’ It was about the contest itself. That was a constant for us, competition. I probably won more at the start and then when he was 16 or 17, it turned quickly.� A prized recruit, Morikawa nevertheless got to Cal only to find out his short game was lacking. He worked on it until it was TOUR-quality. He became the No. 1-ranked amateur, turned pro, and won in Reno in just his eighth start, closing with three straight birdies to beat Troy Merritt in the modified Stableford format. Surprising? Not really. Sessinghaus has never seen Morikawa look out of sorts in the heat of battle. Well, almost never. When the new TOUR winner was tabbed to throw out the first pitch for his beloved L.A. Dodgers last Labor Day, he was edgy. His mom, dad, brother, girlfriend (Katherine) and manager waited patiently as he walked out to the mound. That caddie Jakovac, a devout San Francisco Giants fan, was probably going to give him the needle if he made a lousy throw probably didn’t help, either. “That was the first time I’ve seen Collin nervous,� Sessinghaus says with a laugh. “It was kind of fun to see that vulnerable side of him; this was totally outside his comfort zone. In warm-ups he was doing fine, but when the pitch came, he threw it into the dirt a little bit. We had fun with that.� For now, he’ll stick to the golf course, where Cal’s Desimone says he’s never seen Morikawa pick a wrong club, and never seen a player with better distance control. Where will he pick up win No. 2? With Morikawa’s mindset, it could be anywhere. “I think a lot of people aren’t embracing competing to be great and to win,� says Sessinghaus. “We’ve watered it down to, Let’s just try our best. I get that, but Collin has always believed he could win. Talking with J.J., his game sets up for 90% of the courses he’s going to play because he hits it so well. “There may be a couple bomb-and-gauge courses where there’s no consequences for a miss,� he adds, “and at those ones he might not have as good a shot, but other than that, he’s going to have a shot to win every time.�

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AUGUSTA, Ga. – Sure, Patrick Reed played Augusta National while starring at the college just miles down the road, a privilege extended annually to the Division I schools in the state of Georgia. Those rounds were on a shaggier, slower version of Alister Mackenzie’s masterpiece, though. Reed and his teammates were playing a very different Augusta National on those occasions when they drove down Magnolia Lane instead of the cleverly-named Magnolia Drive (so close, but so far!) that leads into Forest Hills, the public course that the Augusta State Jaguars called their home. The Augusta National that players face during Masters week is almost unrecognizable from the one that’s seen any other week. Conditions change so dramatically on the tournament’s eve that players talk about the Green Jackets “flipping the switchâ€� that makes the course exponentially firmer and faster overnight. That’s why Reed’s experience from his amateur days was little help, if any, when it came to the first major of the year. It showed in the high scores he kept shooting at what could be considered a hometown major. Nine of his 12 rounds at Augusta National were over par and none were lower than 70. His scoring average in his first four Masters was 74.3, and he was 21 over par in his previous six rounds. Last year, he shot 76-77 to miss his second cut in four Masters starts. Not exactly a record that portended future success. It didn’t look like Reed would be adding green to the red, white and blue that already filled his closet. For a player with majors on his mind, the repeated failures at the only annual site of a Grand Slam event was unacceptable. This year, Team Reed embarked on a “deep diveâ€� to try to solve the riddle that is Augusta National. That meant back-to-back, eight-hour days in the week heading into the 2018 Masters. On the first day, they only played four holes – Nos. 1, 2, 12 and 13 – while walking the golf course with a local caddie to look for the ideal lines off the tees and flat putts on the undulating greens. Kirk estimates they hit 20 shots in those eight hours. “Maybe 30,â€� he said. “And about 5,000 putts.â€� The next day, they played 18 holes in eight hours, a pace that makes Saturday at your local muni look like a two-ball with Brandt Snedeker and Usain Bolt. Reed hit multiple tee shots on each hole, searching for the optimal target for all the potential combinations of wind direction and hole location. They took their time around the greens, as well. “To play well on this golf course, you have to operate on such a non-linear plane,â€� Kirk said. “If you try to just go point-to-point (in a straight line), you’re going to get killed out here.â€� On Monday of Masters week, while most eyes were trained on the threesome of Tiger Woods, Fred Couples and Justin Thomas, Reed played alone behind them. It took him three hours to play nine holes. The long hours were worthwhile. Team Reed cracked the code, resulting in the first major championship for its 27-year-old CEO. Reed used his exhaustive education of Augusta National to shoot 15-under 273, just three shots off the tournament’s scoring record. His first three sub-70 rounds at the home of the Masters (69-66-67) gave him a three-shot lead after 54 holes. The final round wasn’t as good, but it was good enough. He hung tough through the trials and travails that can be expected on a player’s maiden voyage into major contention. He finished one shot ahead of Rickie Fowler and two ahead of a surging Jordan Spieth, who shot a final-round 64 despite a bogey at the final hole. Reed also held off Rory McIlroy, with whom he played in the final group. McIlroy shot a final-round 74 to extend his quest for the Career Grand Slam another year. Reed couldn’t help but notice that the fans and media were pulling for those other players. He thrives on slights, both real and perceived. It’s why his best play is in international Cup competition. “No one expects me to go out and win,â€� said Reed, who admit that the lack of support “fueled my fire.â€� Most of his peers will avoid listening to TV commentators in the hours before the final round, but Reed was watching when all but one of Golf Channel’s commentators picked him to lose his three-shot lead. Reed also noticed the tepid response he received on the first tee, compared to the enthusiastic roars for “Rors.” Combine Sunday’s lack of support with his copious course notes, and it created a winning combination. Late on Sunday afternoon, one of Augusta National’s club professionals congratulated Kirk on his student’s victory. “No one worked harder,â€� he said. Reed now has six PGA TOUR victories, including a major, World Golf Championship and FedExCup Playoffs event. He’s fifth in this season’s FedExCup standings. Like many of his peers, Reed uses a collective noun when discussing his on-course efforts. Team Reed includes his wife and former caddie, Justine; her brother, Kessler, who now carries Patrick’s bag; Kirk, the swing coach, and Gregory, Reed’s college coach at Augusta State who now serves as his performance coach. They spent the past few months trying to find Patrick the right clubs after he struggled last year with his equipment. He started the year without an equipment deal, giving himself the freedom to tinker but also the burden of experimenting with the endless options available. “It was a big distraction,â€� Kirk said. “Instead of spending time on skill training and doing things to help his golf game, we were testing shafts and heads and balls.â€� The setup he used to win the Masters wasn’t finalized until last month. He settled on a Ping G400 driver at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and put a Titleist Pro V1 into play at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship. He also put an old set of Callaway irons in his bag earlier this year. The new clubs helped him have three consecutive top-10 finishes entering the Masters, including a runner-up at the Valspar Championship. Justine is more than just the mother of their two children, three-year-old Windsor Wells and four-month-old Barrett Benjamin. She’s involved in all his decisions, even poring through the data to find the holes at Augusta National that gave her husband trouble. Patrick credited her for convincing him to hit 3-wood off the first tee instead of driver, which helped him play one of the course’s hardest holes in even par. He’d averaged 4.7 strokes on the hole in his previous Masters. He birdied the hole for the first time in this year’s second round. A change in trajectories also helped. The standard scouting report on Reed notes his strong preference for a draw. He worked to add a fade before the Masters to help him hit some of the fairways he’d consistently struggled to find. When Reed had trouble producing that shot shape during a practice session, Kirk told him to “scrap all the rulesâ€� and do whatever it took to move the ball left-to-right. It required an exaggerated swing, with an Arnold Palmer-esque follow-through, for Reed to go against his natural ball flight. He had hesitations about unveiling the unorthodox swing on TOUR, but the shot was crucial to his victory. Finding more fairways is important for Reed, who isn’t one of these 20-somethings who gets it done with prodigious distance off the tee. He ranks 52nd on TOUR in driving distance (299.4 yards). “When he can be in the fairway, he’s tough to beat,â€� Gregory said. “He’s as good as anybody in the world from 150 yards and in.â€� Augusta National famously favors a draw, the trajectory played by its co-founder Bobby Jones, but there are several holes where it helps to hit the tee shot left-to-right, including the par-5 eighth and 15th holes, as well as the finishing hole. The new shot shape was one reason Reed was on record-setting pace on the par-5s, playing his first 12 in 13 under par. He eagled both of the second nine’s par-5s on Saturday to take control of the tournament. He parred all four on Sunday, but still was just two shots off the tournament’s par-5 scoring record. Clinging to a one-shot lead, he played the 18th hole perfectly to clinch his first major. “He’s a throwback. He’s a shotmaker. He loves to move the ball,â€� said Gregory, who celebrated his 43rd birthday Sunday by watching his student’s victory. “Augusta rewards a creative mind, not someone who only sees only one shot, especially around the greens.â€� But it also takes local knowledge. That was the added ingredient this year. “It takes time to learn this golf course,â€� Gregory said. “Jordan Spieth is the exception.â€� And, for this year, Patrick Reed rules.

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The PGA TOUR’s Return to Golf continues with the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club. It’s the second iteration of the event after 2019’s debut. Five of the top 10 on the FedExCup standings will tee it up in Michigan along with Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler, and last year’s winner, Nate Lashley. FIELD NOTES: 12-time PGA TOUR winner and former world No.1 Jason Day will make his Rocket Mortgage Classic debut … Another former No. 1, Dustin Johnson, will play in Detroit for the second year in a row … Nate Lashley will return to defend along with former U.S. Amateur champion Doc Redman, who was last year’s runner-up after Monday qualifying … Four-time TOUR winner Kevin Na will play his maiden Rocket Mortgage Classic … Bryson DeChambeau, who finished T3-T8 in the first two events back after the hiatus, will also make his Rocket Mortgage Classic debut … Sponsor exemptions include new pros Sahith Theegala and Peter Kuest. Theegala won this year’s Ben Hogan and Fred Haskins awards. FEDEXCUP: Winner gets 500 FedExCup points. COURSE: Detroit Golf Club (North), 7,334 yards, par 72. The North course opened more than 100 years ago and was recently upgraded in order to prepare for the TOUR’s arrival in 2019. The 5 under par cutline a year ago was the lowest on TOUR since 2016, and tournament organizers, per the Detroit Free Press, are expected to grow the rough longer to beef up the difficulty this year. STORYLINES: This will be the fourth event on the PGA TOUR’s Return to Golf … The PGA TOUR returned to Michigan last year for the first time since 2009… Three of the world’s top 10 players – Dustin Johnson, Webb Simpson and Patrick Reed – will tee it up in Detroit… The last three events had all of the top-5 golfers in the world in the field, but both Brooks Koepka and Webb Simpson withdrew from the Travelers Championship out of an abundance of caution due to COVID-19. 72-HOLE RECORD: 263, Nate Lashley (2019) 18-HOLE RECORD: 63, Nate Lashley (2019, first round), J.T. Poston (2019, second round) LAST TIME: It was one of the most feel-good stories on TOUR a year ago as Nate Lashley, the last man in the field, captured his first PGA TOUR title. He won by six shots over Redman after leading the tournament wire-to-wire. Lashley’s backstory is well documented: Both his parents and college girlfriend died in a plane crash en route to watching him play an event. Wes Roach and Rory Sabbatini finished T3 while six players, including former FedExCup champion Brandt Snedeker, major champion Patrick Reed, and young star Joaquin Niemann, finished T5. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS). PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday 6:30 a.m.-6 p.m. (featured groups), Saturday-Sunday 8 a.m.-3 p.m. (featured groups). Saturday-Sunday 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (featured holes). Radio: Thursday-Friday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio).

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