‘Very scared’ Collin Morikawa rallies to top 10 at RBC Heritage, says schedule is ‘unknown’

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Collin Morikawa had “never been this scared in my life” to play golf in the first round of the RBC Heritage.

Coming off a T7 finish at the Masters, he was still swinging it at 50% and “limited on the shots I can play.”

“I’m not in pain,” he said on Thursday. “I know it looked painful, but I’m just very scared, and I’ve never been this scared in my life to go out and play. But I think it’s because it happened on the golf course. I’ve never had any back stuff happen on the golf course. Every time in the gym.”

Three sub-60 rounds later, Morikawa still feels the same. Starting the day eight shots off the lead, he carded a final-round, 4-under 67 to finish at 13-under and T4, five shots behind winner Matt Fitzpatrick.

“I’m happy these last two weeks are done,” said Morikawa after his final round. “It’s been a grind. The two weeks of golf have felt like a full year of golf, just grinding through it, playing.

“But it was nice, I think I learned a lot about myself. Mentally, I was pretty strong throughout the last two weeks. There’s something to take from not having the full health of being able to swing a club but kind of working with what you have.”

One month after incurring a back injury at THE PLAYERS Championship, the seven-time PGA TOUR winner is still feeling its lingering effects. At the Masters last week, he said that he doesn’t feel any pain but that he’s encountering a mental wall.

He looked gingerly all week at Harbour Town Golf Links, tenderly taking practice swings, walking in and out of bunkers and picking up his ball. He had a little more pep in his step on Sunday, where he carded six birdies and hit 14 greens in regulation. Morikawa was second in Strokes Gained: Approach overall this week.

This is Morikawa’s fifth straight top-seven finish, stretching back to his win at the season’s first Signature Event, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and excluding his withdrawal after playing one hole at THE PLAYERS. Morikawa said the Masters “was one of the best tournaments I could have asked for.”

Morikawa and his wife Katherine announced that they are expecting their first child later this spring. Currently, Morikawa will be sitting out the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, where he missed the cut with playing partner Kurt Kitayama in 2025, to recuperate and test the limits of his swing in a “comfortable, at-home setting.”

“I had a few swings out there where, yeah, the speed might have caught up to me and then you start walking and you have that sense of something is going to grab and it’s the worst feeling,” he said. “So I had to really catch myself and reel myself back this week.”

Beyond that, the PGA TOUR season moves into back-to-back Signature Events in Miami and Charlotte, North Carolina, and then the PGA Championship, where Morikawa won his first major championship in 2020, before capturing The Open Championship in 2021. What will his schedule look like then?

“Unknown,” he said. “Going to see how the body goes. Obviously we have a baby due, and that can kind of throw some things off. Going to take it week by week now.”