Collin Morikawa was blunt in his response as to why he’s at this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic for the first time in his career.
“To win,” the two-time major champion said on Wednesday.
That’s something Morikawa hasn’t managed to do in 19 months, and acknowledged his 2023 season to date has been “frustrating.”
Morikawa is coming off a missed cut at the Travelers Championship and doesn’t have a top-10 since the Masters in April. He has slipped to 20th in the world rankings and is 32nd in the FedEx Cup standings.
Morikawa was in contention at the Memorial before withdrawing due to a back injury, and has more missed cuts (three) than top-10s (two) over his past 13 starts.
“Look, it all comes down to just winning,” he said. “You can miss 20 cuts and have two wins. And I’d love to win. It’s not the consistency I’d want, but you get my point.
“Winning to me is everything.”
If there’s a player in this week’s field in Detroit who can commiserate with Morikawa’s frustration, it’s Justin Thomas.
Also a two-time major champion, Thomas has dropped to 17th in the world. He added this stop to his schedule as he tries to avoid snapping a streak of seven consecutive years with a win on tour and six consecutive years of finishing in the top 10 of the FedEx Cup standings.
Only the top 70 players qualify for the first leg of the playoffs this season. Thomas is currently 66th after a T9 last week, and said he told his team about a month ago to add this event to his schedule.
“Quite a bit, to be honest,” Thomas said when asked what role his place in the standings played in being in Detroit. “I was outside the playoffs going into last week.
“I wish it was under different circumstances, but I’m very glad to be here, you know what I’m saying?”
Thomas hasn’t won since last year’s PGA Championship and last week’s top-10 came on the heels of a pair of missed cuts.
“I’m very fortunate that I’ve never been in this position in my career,” he said. “In the past I’ve kind of already been looking at (the Tour Championship at) East Lake at this point in the season, but I’m not in that spot right now.
“So, I just need to continue to keep building and keep working on what I have been.”
Of Thomas’ 15 career wins on tour, two have come while making a tournament debut.
“The unknown is the fun and bad part about this game, so we’ll see where it takes us,” he said.
Morikawa has built a reputation for excelling in his event debuts — with four of his five career victories coming in his first time at a tournament.
“A couple more starts left to this year and it’s really just to win. That’s been the goal since day one and we just haven’t gotten it done this year,” he said. “It’s been a while, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it. It’s still there.
“This year hasn’t been great, but I’m not giving up.”
–Field Level Media