Check in every week for the unfiltered opinions of our writers and editors as they break down the hottest topics in the sport, and join the conversation by tweeting us @golf_com. This week, we discuss Collin Morikawa’s victory, The Concession Golf Club, Brooks vs. DJ, Annika Sorenstam and more.
Tiger Woods is in the thoughts of the Tour Confidential crew. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.
1. Collin Morikawa picked up his third PGA Tour title in eight months on Sunday, coolly winning the WGC-Workday Championship by three strokes over a chase pack that included Brooks Koepka and Viktor Hovland. For all the recent talk about the importance of distance in the pro game, Morikawa has excelled with a 295-yard driving average, which isn’t short by Tour standards, but isn’t long, either. (In fact, 295 is exactly the Tour average.) In your mind, which part of Morikawa’s game has most powered his success?
Michael Bamberger, senior writer: His head. Just seems like a level-headed, collected person who is going to make good decisions under stress and not get too down when things go south or too up when he’s riding high.
Josh Sens, senior writer (@JoshSens): You don’t notch four Tour wins by such a young age without having the intangible Michael mentions. But if we’re looking at hard numbers, it’s his iron game, as the stroke-gained stats confirm.
Sean Zak, senior editor (@sean_zak): Everyone knows about his irons game, but really he’s just so damn confident, and hasn’t let his putting woes seep into other parts of his game. He expected all this success, even if that’s an unrealistic point of view. He’ll expect to win at the Players, too, and his ballstriking will surely push him into contention.
Dylan Dethier, senior writer (@dylan_dethier): Irons, irons, irons. I spent a bunch of time walking with Morikawa this week, and I was struck by just how many times he hit an iron to the smartest possible portion of the green. When we’re writing instruction articles, I often reference making “aggressive swings at conservative targets” and when he’s on, Morikawa has both the brains and the surgical precision to execute on that like nobody I can remember save perhaps Tiger Woods.
2. The WGC-Workday was played for the first time at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla.; Concession was a late fill-in for the usual venue, Club de Golf Chapultepec, in Mexico City. Though Morikawa finished at 18 under, Concession was no pushover, presenting the field with a variety of risk-reward decisions and challenging shots, especially around the greens. Would you like to see Concession worked into the regular Tour schedule? (Disclosure: The course was built by Nicklaus Design, which is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf.)
Bamberger: Competitive? Yes, she could make cuts regularly and top-10 now and again and maybe win a couple of events if she played in 45 tournaments over three years. That would be meaningless to her.
Sens: She could put herself into the mix, no doubt. But competitive isn’t dominant. There’s just too much young talent out there for that to happen.
Zak: I loved seeing her back out there. She had all our attention during the peak of her career. The women’s game is even more robust now, too. But realistically, she’s telling the truth. It’s a lot to ask out of an older player. Will I tune in to more female senior events? Hell yeah.
Dethier: I wish she’d play a few more events, just because I love the idea that she could possess this winning X-factor, not use it for 13 years and then tap back into it once she’s back in competitive play. But I understand why she wouldn’t.
5. In the second round, Sorenstam received an incorrect ruling from an official that cost Sorenstam a shot. The rules don’t allow for retroactive corrections in the case of a bad ruling. Should they?
Bamberger: I think it can be done, and it certainly has been done. Bob Jones was the ultimate rules authority at the Masters. But in this situation, Annika holed out after taking a drop, and that complicates matters. Her play on the hole unfolded a certain way because of the incorrect decision, and you can’t get that back. Had she played two balls, one from the open gate position, one as instructed, she could have counted the open-gate score at the end of the day. She had the right idea, and Annika, at least by reputation, is a rules expert.
Sens: Yes. It has already been proven to work in other sports. Of course, even retroactive rulings aren’t always perfect. But on balance, they’ve been a good thing, producing fairer outcomes. Golf prides itself on fairness. Why not take a very manageable step toward ensuring it?
Zak: Why not? Once again, it seems like common sense can be applied to the rules of golf, but sometimes the rules don’t want to listen to common sense.
Dethier: Yes. But in this case, I don’t think it would have quite worked out unless, as Bamberger says, she’d played a second ball.
6. GOLF’s latest iteration of ClubTest dropped earlier this week. (Check it out here!) Every golfer has a club that holds a special place in their heart. When you look back on all the gear you’ve played through the years, which single club (or set) do you most treasure?
