How ‘greed’ derailed this Masters co-leader’s green-jacket dreams

AUGUSTA, Ga. — “Greed,” financier Gordon Gekko famously declared in the 1987 film Wall Street, “is good. Greed is right, greed works.”

Cleary Gekko never played Augusta National on Masters Sunday, because according to one Masters contender, that particular vice is, in fact, not good.

It’s bad. Real bad.

Collin Morikawa started the final round of this 88th Masters in an enviable spot. At six under, he was just one back of leader Scottie Scheffler and coming off a four-birdie third-round 69 in which he exhibited more than a few flashes of his former major-winning self: flagged irons, steady short game, no-sweat pars.

On Sunday, playing in the final pairing with Scheffler, Morikawa picked up where he’d left off in the third round, opening with seven straight pars to draw him even with Scheffler, who had played the same stretch in one over. Things got better still at the par-5 8th, where Morikawa made his first birdie of the day.

Then came the 460-yard par-4 9th.

After flaring his tee shot into the pines, Morikawa played a low runner up to the green that caught the cavernous front-left bunker. With his first attempt from the sand, Morikawa got too cute. The ball caught the lip and came back to his feet. Another sand shot and two putts later, he had made a double-bogey 6.

Morikawa settled himself with a par at 10 but then came undone again at the fearsome par-4 11th, where so many Masters dreams have gone to die. Now at five under, he split the sloping fairway with his tee shot, leaving himself 202 yards to a green guarded by a pond to the left. Even if you didn’t watch the broadcast, you know where this is going. Splash. “Just tried to hit too perfect of a shot,” he would say later. A drop, a chip and another two-putt later and Morikawa had another double on his card.

Four dropped shots in three holes? That’s no way to win a green jacket.   

The culprit?

“I got greedy,” Morikawa said after his round. “When you’re playing really good, you don’t get greedy, and I got greedy on 9, I got greedy on 11. I wasn’t pressing, I just was trying to hit it a little bit too close, and greed can get the best of us.”

After the mess at 11, Morikawa made birdies on both back-nine par-5s, 13 and 15, before closing with a bogey at 18 to drop back to two over for his round and four under for the week, seven back of Scheffler in a tie for third with Tommy Fleetwood and Max Homa. It was Morikawa’s highest major finish since his win at the 2022 Open Championship.  

Until this week, Morikawa’s 2024 had been underwhelming. Since his T5 in the limited-field, season-opening Sentry, he had two top-20s but also two missed cuts in six starts.

“This has been a weird year, but I saw a lot of good this week,” Morikawa said. “Today was the first day where I really just mentally kind of gave a couple away. Sometimes it happens.”

It, in this case, was greed, and, with all respect to Mr. Gekko, it was no good at all.