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Last summer, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas had dinner together at the RBC Canadian Open.
Morikawa was making his professional debut that week after a sparkling amateur career, and with a goal of earning full PGA Tour membership he sought guidance from Thomas.
Just more than a year later, Morikawa earned his second tour victory Sunday, beating Thomas on the third playoff hole at Muirfield Village to win the Workday Charity Open.
Three strokes behind Thomas with three holes remaining in regulation, Morikawa won the Sunday shootout with some help from Thomas, who bogeyed the 16th and 18th holes in regulation to set up the playoff. After Thomas holed a 50-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole, Morikawa matched him with a 24-foot birdie putt of his own on the 18th green to extend the playoff. He won two holes later with a par on the 10th hole.
What did he learn from Thomas at dinner in Canada?
“(It was him) telling me, ‘If you're good enough, you're going to get out here at some point,’ ” Morikawa said. “Everyone's path is different. You don't know how quick or how slow it's going to get there, but if you're good enough you're going to get here.
“At that point ... I felt good enough already, and I just had to have some starts and opportunities and obviously play well, but just have those starts to show everything and everyone what I had.”
Morikawa won the Barracuda Championship last summer to earn his PGA Tour card and, along with Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff, is one part of a dynamic trio of newcomers reshaping the tour landscape.
Ask tour players to name the best iron player in the game, if Morikawa’s name isn’t the first out of their mouths then it’s second or third. In fact, he ranks third on tour in strokes gained approaching the green. While his putting stats aren’t impressive – 171st in strokes-gained putting entering the Workday event – he is the definition of consistency.
When he missed the cut at the Travelers Championship, it ended a streak of 22 consecutive made cuts. It was his first missed cut as a professional, which gives him the distinction now of having more PGA Tour victories than missed cuts.
He came within a stroke of having another victory, losing the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial in a playoff to Daniel Berger in the first event back after the three-month shutdown.
“I'm obviously trying to be very consistent,” Morikawa said Sunday, “but I also want to give myself a chance to win. And then you've got to close it out, and then you pile on more after the other because if I just finished 10th every single week, no one would be talking about me, other than ‘Here's another top-10.’
“This is a huge kind of stepping stone. We got (win) No. 1 out of the way, we got No. 2, let the gates just open and let's just keep going because obviously it was a tough loss at Colonial a month ago, but I learned a lot.
“I learned a lot from last week or a week-and-a-half ago at Travelers after my missed cut. This is just more positives, more learning for me, and I've got to go back to, ‘OK, what did I do great, what did I do wrong this week? How can I get better, move on to next week and make a lot of birdies?’ ”
Top: Collin Morikawa (right) with Justin Thomas
Ron Green Jr.