Six-time PGA Tour winning golfer is being tipped to win a major in 2025 after ‘phenomenal improvement’

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Like a few of his peers, it has been a turbulent few years for Collin Morikawa since he won his second major title at the 2021 Open Championship.

The early stages of Collin Morikawa‘s professional career were truly remarkable. He won two majors in his first eight starts in the sport’s four biggest events. Meanwhile, he quickly established himself as someone Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup captains could pair with anyone else on the USA side.

He remains one of the best players on the planet, but his victory at the ZOZO Championship in 2023 ended a wait of more than two years for a win on the PGA Tour. And actually, the 27-year-old has not managed to win since.

But perhaps that wait for a win will not last too much longer. Morikawa finished second in the FedEx Cup after such an impressive showing at the Tour Championship. And he is currently number four in the world rankings after such a consistent year.

Collin Morikawa backed to win a third major in 2025

And speaking on his RickRunGood YouTube channel, Rick Gehman has suggested that he is optimistic that 2025 is the year that Morikawa adds that third major title to his list of achievements.

“He was the best player in the world in 2024 without a victory. He got Xander’d, he got Rory’d, he got Scottie’d, everything but victory for Collin. There’s a couple of really good signs here. He is back to being a phenomenal second shot player,” he said.

“In the same way that Justin Thomas is back to being vintage JT, Collin Morikawa is back to being vintage Collin Morikawa, which is terrifying, because he is probably the best second shot player in the world. He drives it well enough. In fact, he’s actually a little bit longer now than he was a couple of years ago. The short game is always underrated, and we’ve got to figure out the putter, but it’s not nearly as bad as it has been at other points in his career.

He technically won the shadow leaderboard at the Tour Championship, but that does not count as a victory because of the staggered start. So he did play well enough to win in that event, and probably a couple of other events. You see the top five finishes all over the yard, he was in contention at the Masters, he was in contention at the PGA Championship.

“He did not finish worse than 16th in any major. He definitely over performed expectation by winning twice in his first eight major championship starts. But now he is starting to pepper the top of the leaderboard a lot.

“This is just him giving himself a lot of opportunities. I think Collin – I know there’s only four of them – I think he could win a major in 2025.”

Where Morikawa struggled in 2024 as he’s backed for a big 2025

It was such a strength of Morikawa’s game for so long that it was almost taken for granted that he would hit the perfect iron shot every time he found himself in the fairway.

Interestingly, while Gehman believes that the American has rediscovered the magic with his approach game, his numbers across the entire season are a little less impressive.

Morikawa was actually in 42nd on the PGA Tour for strokes gained with his approach game in 2024. But what perhaps bodes well was that a lot of his worst finishes of the season came in a number of the tournaments with weaker fields.

He missed the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open, while he finished in a tie for 75th at the Valero Texas Open. And he was outside the top 50 again at the ZOZO Championship.

He would surely prefer to have it that way around. Certainly, there is no doubt at all that Morikawa knows what it takes to get across the line on the biggest stages.