The iron skill of Collin Morikawa

Morikawa was born in 1997, entered professional golf in mid-2019 and became a full-time PGA Tour player after two months. Summarizing the first season (2019-2020), he ranked second in the performance of irons from fairway to green (approach play).

This period includes the whole year of the Covid-19 outbreak, including three months when Morikawa and all his colleagues had to put down their clubs because the PGA Tour closed the arena. And when he rematched, he in four weeks held two titles, including the major PGA Championship in August 2020.

A month after the breakthrough victory in his personal career, Morikawa took on the challenge of “talent approach” from Golf Digest. At that time, they wanted to measure Morikawa’s accuracy over 12 shots with a 6 iron, because on the PGA Tour at that time, many people thought that he used this club to be more accurate than his colleagues using the pitching wedge – a specialized club. into the green at close range.

With this tool, the PGA Tour player enters within seven meters of the hole on average and Morikawa up to 3.5 meters in the range from Golf Digest.

This season, Morikawa is at the top of the PGA Tour in terms of “approach play”. Last weekend, he held The Open at Royal St. George’s in the Sandwich region, England. It was Morikawa’s second time competing on a coastal-style course (original links) with stiff fairways, fast greens and wind as a “specialty”. According to professional summary, he still ranks T6 on the “strange field” in technical statistics for his forte, T5 in terms of putter performance for each standard green.

As for putting the ball on the closing day, Morikawa was highly effective, passing four birdies and keeping par at key moments. He, thus, usurped Oosthuizen’s first place, then increased the gap and maintained the advantage until the end of the game.

Quoc Huy