AUGUSTA, Ga. — Before the first round of this 90th Masters, the last swing Collin Morikawa had taken in competition was a practice swing. That swipe came in the opening round of the Players Championship last month, when, while rehearsing for his second tee shot of the day at TPC Sawgrass, Morikawa wound up and eeeek . . . something didn’t feel right. He grabbed his lower back and tried to walk it off, but moments later the white flag went up. He was done. “I can’t swing through it,” he said later. “Trust me, I would play if I could. It’s just the worst thing in the world.”
The severity of Morikawa’s injury became even clearer last week when he withdrew from his next scheduled start at the Valero Texas Open. That scratch brought into question whether Morikawa might also have to forego the season’s first major at Augusta National this week. But Morikawa wasn’t about to let his misfortune mar his Masters week.
On Monday, he said his “back actually feels fine. It’s just other parts of the body not cooperating a little bit how I want.” He said he was chipping and putting beautifully and had been hitting full shots for the last week but was limited in terms of what kind of shots he could hit, which would force him into a “different game plan” at Augusta.
Morikawa referenced Augusta National Women’s Amateur competitor Bailey Shoemaker, who has been battling a painful ulnar nerve injury that she says has made her more deliberate over the ball. “When you hurt yourself swinging, it’s a completely different beast of itself because you just don’t know,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a commitment, trust.”
Augusta National is not a golf course you want to play with any degree of uncertainty in your game — certainly not this week when the greens are rolling like countertops, the eyes of the world are upon you and legacies are in the balance. But sitting out a Masters in the prime of your career is no cup of pimento cheese, either, so Morikawa decided to press onward, if ever so cautiously.
In his Monday practice round, he hit only chip shots. On Tuesday, he played nine holes, followed by another nine on Wednesday. When Morikawa woke up Thursday morning, he said he’d “never felt this nervous in my life.” Not about playing on so grand a stage — this was his seventh Masters start, after all, and 25th major start overall — but about whether his back might give out again. “There’s a certain doubt factor of, like, is this going to happen, is this not?” he said.
“Physically there’s no pain,” he continued. “It’s just a trust thing. My legs don’t want to trust that it’s going to hold up the back and the rest of the body. When that’s feeling wobbly, plus you add the adrenaline and the nerves, it’s not easy.”
Is Augusta National ever?
Morikawa opened solidly, with six straight pars, before dropping his first stroke when he missed the fairway right at the par-4 7th and had to punch his second shot into a front bunker. Another bogey followed at the 9th, where he missed the green long and right. His drives lacked their usual pop but, the firm conditions worked in his favor. “I’m calling it a little dink it out there and find it and move on,” he said. On the inward nine, Morikawa made two more bogies, at 11 and 14, but countered them with birdies at 10 and 13. He signed for 74, which had him in 41st place as of this writing.
Thing is, it’s not only the fear of reaggravating his back that is hampering Morikawa. “The legs just don’t feel comfortable right now,” he said. “They don’t feel strong like they’re underneath me. I don’t think it’s really muscle loss. It’s just a trust factor and saying that the legs are under there that you can go fire the way I used to.” He said his walking pace has been sluggish, to the point where he’s “probably the slowest out there out of this entire field.”
All in all, though, he said he was pleased to get through the round and post a number on a course that can make even the world’s best players look silly. “I’m proud of myself the way it kind of played out today,” he said. “I mean, I had no clue what I was going to shoot today. Like, I had no idea.”
That he signed for a score at all felt like a win in itself.
