Collin Morikawa

Collin Morikawa was born on 6 February 1997 in Los Angeles and grew up in the La Cañada golf scene. His father, Blaine, is Japanese American with Hawaiian roots; his mother, Debbie, is Chinese American from California. At UC Berkeley he won five college events, including the 2019 Pac-12 title, spent time as the world’s No. 1 amateur, and turned professional weeks before the U.S. Open that same year.

The Tour arrival was unusually clean. He won the Barracuda Championship as a rookie, then took the 2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in his major debut — a home-state win built on iron play that left little margin for anyone else. A year later he won The Open Championship at Royal St George’s on debut, finished 2021 as Race to Dubai champion (the first American to do so), and reached world No. 2 that October. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup weeks followed as part of the U.S. team rotation.

The middle of the decade was harder. Wins dried up until the 2023 Zozo Championship in Japan, then another long stretch until the 2026 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. There he closed with a birdie on 18 for his seventh Tour title, ending a 28-month drought and tying a tournament scoring mark relative to par. He has also played the Olympics for the United States. The irons that built the early résumé remain the calling card; putting and week-to-week consistency decide whether another major arrives.

Morikawa’s Southern California pathway sits near Rose Zhang’s on the Asian American golf map, but his next chapter is personal: turn Pebble Beach into a second peak, not a one-week relief. Another major would settle the argument about whether 2020–21 was a lightning start or the floor of a longer career at the top of the game.