Collin Morikawa, at Aronimink this week for the 108th PGA Championship, has battled back discomfort for much of the 2026 season. Back spasms forced him to withdraw from the Players Championship after one hole, the Texas Open and last week’s Truist Championship to rest the lingering back issues.
The physical pain is one thing, but it’s also been a mental grind for the two-time Major Champion.
“I think the mental game -- we always talk about it in golf, that the mental game is a big aspect of it, and it truly is,” said Morikawa, who played through the pain to finish T7 in the Masters and T4 the following week at the RBC Heritage. “You're able to push yourself that much farther. Trust me, it was very, very uncomfortable to play the Masters and very uncomfortable to play the week after at Hilton Head, but you just have to keep pushing. Whatever the next week or weeks, I'm going to have to just breathe it out after this. Like I will do everything it takes to play some great golf, like I said, starting Thursday for four days.”
Morikawa says that over the last month and a half, he’s shown there are many different ways to play golf.
“You obviously wish you were healthy, that you could just go out there and see target, hit target, but it doesn't mean that you're out of the tournament,” he said.
Before the back issues arose Morikawa snapped a nearly 2 ½ year winless drought in February, winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am by one stroke over Min Woo Lee and Sepp Straka. It was his first win since the 2023 Zozo Championship in Japan. He followed that with a T7 in the Genesis Invitational and a solo fifth in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
He withdrew from the Texas Open the week before the Masters and was forced to get comfortable being uncomfortable in Augusta.
“I think certain golf courses allow for that,” he said. “Weirdly, like Augusta we think of a big hitter's golf course, a big golf course. But there's a lot of slopes, so I can use a lot of slope in that way. With the shot shaping, I just was so accepting of how things are going to go, and it's so hard to do that, I think even in life, is just accepting that's just the nature of it.
“I've been able to take that into it. It will be interesting to see whether I get frustrated or not considering that the body feels a little bit better. I hope to take that mentality I had at Augusta and just continue that into the rest of the year, because that's a mentality I think the best have. That's how, for me at least, I feel like I'm going to play great golf.”
The 29-year-old Morikawa joined the PGA TOUR in 2019 and made 22 consecutive cuts to begin his career, which is second only to Tiger Woods’ record of 25.
Playing in just his third major championship, Morikawa put on a clinic coming down the closing stretch at TPC Harding Park on his way to the 2020 PGA Championship title. He ran away from the pack with a chip-in birdie on the 14th hole, followed by an eagle on the par-4 16th en route to a final round of 6-under 64 to win by two strokes.
He backed that up with a two-stroke victory over Jordan Spieth in the 2021 Open Championship.
Though that was his last major win, he’s made plenty of noise in the game’s four biggest championships since with 10, top-20 finishes – five of those in the top 5 – since.
While the back issues have limited his number of starts in 2026, Morikawa has learned a lot about himself with consistent solid play when he’s been able to play. He’s hoping to keep that momentum going this week.
“I wish I was 100 percent healthy,” said the seven-time PGA TOUR winner. “The body doesn't feel bad, just it's uncomfortable, and there's a trust factor I'm kind of having to deal with, which is -- I've never had to deal with it. I can't imagine wanting anyone to deal with it because it's just a very weird feeling of not trusting the body and yet knowing that things are going to be okay. So it's just taking it day by day, doing what I need to do. Then go out, look, it's four days of golf, one at a time, and I'm going to find a way to hopefully play some great golf starting Thursday.”