THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Collin Morikawa to the media center at the 2024 FedEx St. Jude Championship. Welcome. You're entering the week ranked No. 4 in the FedExCup standings. Can you open with some thoughts about being back in Memphis for the first leg of the Playoffs.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, I love it. You obviously get to this week, and the past couple years you've kind of -- you look at the season and you realize, okay, you've got to have a really good first week and you've got to have a good second week, and knowing where I'm at, and I'll be at the TOUR Championship, I think it's just leading up, how do I play the best not only this week but how do I really prepare for three weeks from now and try and win it all.
Q. Touch on your regular season; you've had seven top 10s, a pretty great season, but some recap and goals going into TOUR Championship?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: It's been a lot better than the past couple years. But I think when I look back at seasons and I look at whether I succeeded in my goals, it obviously comes down to wins. Right now I've got zero. It's been frustrating in that sense. It's been great knowing that I've been able to give myself chances and I've been in a lot of final pairings or at least the last few groups, but at the end of the day you want to be able to win and you want to be able to close out tournaments. That's what not only people remember but that's what you remember.
I've got three more weeks to kind of close off hopefully three wins and see how everything -- then I can look back and say it's been a decent season.
Q. Can you share a little bit about this custom bag that TaylorMade provided you for the Playoffs?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, really special bag. Really cool. I think obviously FedEx kind of did a little collab with TaylorMade, one of my sponsors, and created this bag special for the Playoffs, and it's obviously very meaningful, not only how it's built -- you have recycled gloves on the side, recycled materials. Someone said there's a part of a FedEx truck in it.
But I think what this represents is really just an accumulation of the entire season. I think what's so special about this bag and the next three weeks I'm going to be using it is that FedEx is going to be donating a thousand dollars per birdie I make for the Playoffs, and that's very, very special. I think it ties in, they're going to be donating to St. Jude, obviously the St. Jude Championship this week. Just a lot of special ties going in.
Q. This morning you got to go in the pro-am with Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway. Penny is known as an avid golfer. What was your assessment of his golf skills and what were some tips and tricks that you gave him that can boost his game a little bit?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: He's really good. He's actually really, really good. I think he had a handicap of 2 today. He made some legit -- I think he made two actual birdies, like normal birdies without his handicap. He was striping it.
He's such a tall guy, and that's obviously how basketball players are, and he's had, I think, six knee surgeries, so he asked me on 18 something he could work on just about rotation and getting it around the corner a little bit better. He hit some balls out to the right. Look, it was impressive. I didn't know what to expect, and sometimes you see a 2 handicap and they're not a 2, but I actually believe him. He's a great player, and just a great guy to hang out with for nine holes today.
Q. On Penny, you were pretty young when penny was in his prime playing basketball. Do you think you have a good sense of how good a basketball player Penny was or are you going to have to look up the YouTube highlights after this?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: I have a decent sense, but I'm definitely going to have to go watch a bunch of highlights later today.
What's cool about what golf has given us is I've been able to meet a bunch of athletes. Sometimes you forget how good they are and how amazing they are at what they do that when you get to talk to them and you hang out with them, it's like, they're just kind of normal guys.
But then when you see what they're able to do on the court or the field or wherever it is, it kind of puts you back, and you're like, this person I just met is very, very special. We got to talk a little bit about his coaching for Memphis and what he's excited for this year, and it's cool when you see them obviously past their careers and giving back and doing what they love. Obviously it's still basketball but coaching other people.
Q. In a weird kind of way and as good and consistent season as you've had, you technically could go into East Lake in the No. 2 seed if you had a couple of runner-up finishes and still not win East Lake and win the FedExCup. Would you be okay with that?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Oh, win East Lake and not win the FedExCup?
Q. Right.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: I just want to win tournaments. I think it takes care of itself. You obviously know where you're slotted at by the time you start the TOUR Championship. Last year I started at 1-under or even par, and I think by the first day I was two back.
That plays into kind of how the week is going to go, and depending where you start, you know you have to make up more ground.
But sometimes you know you've just got to go out and win and see if it plays out and hopefully you're close enough.
Q. Even in your position, which is 4, it still comes down to East Lake, this whole post season. Are you good with that?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: You're asking about the format?
Q. Yeah.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: I've gone back and forth about it. I think the simple answer is yes. I think with any sport, playoffs are playoffs, and sometimes the best teams -- a lot of the times the best teams don't win.
What's crazy about our sport is there's so much fluctuation and there's so much variabilities that you don't know how someone is going to play. The best player in the world could have a bad week, and it's like, man, that week mattered more than others. We have four majors, you have the Playoffs, you have THE PLAYERS. Those weeks matter more, but sometimes people have bad weeks. That's kind of what our Playoffs are.
I don't think it's a perfect system. I think we've got to down to, guys can complain, this, that. If you're the best and you want to show up, you have to show up, especially at the TOUR Championship. That's just how things work. There's a lot on the line, but that's what's so tough about our sport. It's not like you're just better than every single person every single week. Any of these 70 guys this week could come out and win, and that's what's great about our sport, but that's what makes it tough to crown a title.
Q. I know you're not satisfied with your year to date, but is there any upside you see to it? Is there anything that makes you happy about it?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: There's a lot of upside. There's still a lot of positives and there's a lot of growth that has happened. I still believe -- I still haven't felt like I've had that week where I'm like, man, I played the best I could and I got beat, and that's great. There's still a lot of positives.
If I look at where I was in February, March, where there's a lot of searching going on, there's a lot of positives, but at the end of the day you want to be able to close a tournament and win, and that's my focus right now.
Q. It's been a year since the tragedy that happened at Lahaina and you donated a thousand bucks for every birdie that you made. What's it been like over the last 12 months for you and that community, and have you been able to go back and support, and how have they responded?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, thank you for asking about that. Look, it was very eerie going at the beginning of the year, just kind of driving by knowing that that's where my dad grew up and would go there through the summers and spend his time; that's where we grew up taking family vacations. When we were there in January, I honestly couldn't believe it. I've seen some videos recently. I've seen some photos. It still is just slowly being built up. It sucks that that many people lost their homes.
A year ago we raised a lot of money and we did a lot of great things for that community, and we continue to do so. It's like a second home for me.
I think this year with St. Jude and FedEx doing this, whether it's just this timing of the year, whatever it is, I want to raise as much money as possible.
My wife is going to be running the New York Marathon, and we're going to be trying to raise as much money as we can for St. Jude, as well. That's her charity. That's her charity beneficiary for that marathon later in November. I think everything that's piling on, it's all coming together, whether it's FedEx and TaylorMade, St. Jude and ourselves and my family. We're going to be doing as much as we can throughout these Playoffs and the next couple months to help out some great kids.
Q. Did you put any thought into running with her?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Absolutely not. No, I need to go buy a bike so I can ride next to her as she runs 20 miles a day.
Q. You talked at Paris about you've lacked that hot streak in a tournament to win. Can you control those streaks?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Seems like some guys have in the past history of golf. Look, you can obviously raise the bar of your consistency. Obviously a guy like Scottie, his consistency is very, very high. Every day I'm trying to raise that bar. Can you control the hot streaks? I don't think you can control the hot streaks. I don't know if anyone can. But you can raise your bar and raise it as high as possible to when you are playing average, you're up there in the top 5 and you're contending. I've raised that bar over the past few years to a lot better level, but sometimes you need that hot streak to go out and win a golf tournament.
Honestly, when I look back at some of my wins, things were just clicking, and hopefully it starts tomorrow and it ends September 1st.
Q. Going back to Rick, what's been the biggest benefit there to your game?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Just having someone to talk through things. We've learned and we've worked on the kind of things we did really well on before, but we've also learned from our mistakes, the reason why I ended up for a short period of time. But we're not taking anything for granted. We're not trying to dive too deep into things. Sometimes you've got to dumb it down and you've got to make things simple and you've got to understand what worked and what didn't.
The problem is I'm a perfectionist, and I want to make things so perfect that you sometimes go down these paths that don't work out, and it brings you away from keeping that consistency and that level to where you want it. There's obviously things that I'll obviously need to nit-pick every single week, but you've got to remember where that whole level of your game is and say, okay, is that good enough to win. It is good enough to win. I've just got to sharpen up the mind sometimes a little bit better.
Q. It looks like it might feel like déjà-vu here. It rained a little bit last year on the pro-am days and the heat really picks up into the weekend. I wonder if you're anticipating the real heat this weekend and how do you as golfers prepare for that when you have had a cool couple of days on the practice course?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, I got in yesterday. I live in Vegas, so the past kind of week, it's been 110 degrees. A little different with the humidity out here, but it honestly hasn't felt that bad. You've just got to accept it. You're not going to do anything about it, you've just got to know how your body is going to react. You've got to make sure you fuel up. A couple years ago my caddie almost went down. He was feeling it.
So you've just got to do the right steps to make sure when you're out there, you're fueling correctly so you don't feel a little bit more tired than you're used to just because of the heat. But Vegas has helped me a lot just kind of knowing how bad it's going to be out here.
Q. You had a special caddie this morning, Luis, a St. Jude patient. How much does that put it into perspective for you going into round 1 tomorrow?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Perspective is such a big thing. When you meet a kid like Luis and he's just so happy to be there and to talk -- he talked about the Olympics. He talked about the chocolate muffin that I didn't eat in the village. The kid listed off like every Marvel character, how much he loves Deadpool. Honestly, I don't even know if he's played golf and he hit my putt, and he's like, sorry I hit it too hard. It's like, Buddy, it's your first shot you've ever hit.
There's an enjoyment -- enjoyment might not be the right word, but there's just an appreciation for where he is and just having fun. I think we can all bring that kind of childlike mentality to a lot of things we do, and I think we sometimes focus in too much on the small details.
Out there he was just having fun. That is that kind of child mentality, and I want to keep that because I can get hard on myself. I can get hard on my team because yes, I do have a goal to win, but when I've won, I've had a lot of fun, and I haven't had fun just because I'm playing well. It's just that's my nature. Seeing that kind of perspective from Luis this morning allows me just to stay grounded within myself and just go out there and be who I am.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports