Major championship golf has returned to the American sports scene with a vengeance.
The 102nd PGA of America’s 2020 National Golf Championship was contested this last week at San Francisco’s Harding Park.
A municipal golf course that anyone can play, the course was built in 1925 by the same architects that constructed the nearby ultra-private and tony, Olympic Club. The site of many PGA tour events, including the United States Open Championship, the Olympic Club was the boyhood home of Johnny Miller and Ken Venturi, both Hall of fame golfers and major championship winners.
Harding Park was considered the poor man’s answer to the very private Olympic Club.
Because of the COVID-19 virus shut down and quarantine, this is the most extended time length between major golf tournaments since World War II, a span of 382 days.
As usual, the PGA championship brought with it the strongest field of the 2020 season.
95 out of the top 100 players in the world were entered, including all four of last year’s major-championship winners.
Harding Park, the site of this year’s contest, is a remarkable story in itself.
Long considered one of the most majestic public golf courses on the West Coast, it had fallen on hard times as of late.
The host of many local, PGA Tour, and professional events, the scenic and parkland golf course’s downfall was the result of municipal budget cuts that ransacked cities and towns in the 80 and ’90s.
The ultimate irony was, this excellent and scenic golf course was regulated to serve as the parking lot for the 1998 US Open held at nearby Olympic Club. A real tragedy for such a fantastic property.
The advance storylines ahead of this tournament were numerous and bombastic.
How would the public respond to a major without fans and media?
Would Brooks Koepka continue his winning streak in this Championship?
Can Tiger Woods aching and aging body continue his assault on the all-time greatest player record books?
Can a Utah local favorite, Tony Finau, finally win a major after coming close so many times?
How will established stars like Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, and others perform after such an extended layoff between significant events?
And finally, how will Bryson DeChambeau, with his bulked-up body and brutal assault on driving distance, perform on the tree-lined, doglegged, precision shotmaking and relatively short Harding Park perform with his bombing everything out philosophy?
The entire sporting world was waiting for golf’s return, and, for once in a great while, the quality of golf on display did not disappoint.
In the end, none of those advanced storylines was the narrative on a foggy, fresh, and relatively empty playground that was Harding Park.
The main story became one, not of the old guard and repeating champions, but of newcomers to the game of thrones, who had watched and waited for their chance to claim their shot at glory on golf’s biggest stage.
You see, it was just a little over one year ago, in May of 2019, that Colin Morikawa, our newest PGA champion, was a senior at Cal State Berkley, not more than five miles from the golfing mecca that includes Harding Park.
Colin was finishing up his degree at the prestigious Haas School of Business, ranked the sixth-best business school in the world.
Today, a little over one year later, he is not only the reigning PAC-12 golf champion, but he is also the 2020 PGA Champion, becoming the first player to win in his debut since Keegan Bradley in 2011. At age 23, he becomes just the fourth person to win the PGA Championship before the age of 24, joining Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy.
And, in these days of massive unemployment and economic insecurity, Morikawa, since turning professional fourteen short months ago, has won $6,898,941 in on-course winnings.
That computes to just under 500,000 a month since entering the workforce after he graduated college in May of last year.
Or just a little under $125,000 a week, which is just about the yearly average starting salary for a recent graduate of the Haas Business School at the University of California-Berkley.
Most folks would say he has made the right choice of professions.
I had a chance to sit in as Colin Morikawa talked about his latest victory as golf’s newest Major Champion.
Please listen as The Golf Guy, PGA Master Professional Jeff Waters describes all the action and has the reactions of the new champion.
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