Collin Morikawa says he 'owes a lot' to Scottish Open in East Lothian

Collin Morikawa has spoken about how he “owes a lot” to the Scottish Open after last year’s event helped transform him from chump to champ.

Making his debut in the Rolex Series event at The Renaissance Club, the American finished joint-71st behind Australian Min Woo Lee after rounds of 70-67-71-73.

As Morikawa admitted himself, the performance on Scotland’s Golf Coast didn’t exactly make him one of the favourites for The Open at Royal St George’s the following week.

But, helped by some timely tweaks, he made a spectacular winning debut in golf’s oldest major, as had been the case when he won the US PGA Championship at Harding Park in California in 2020.

“Yeah, so the plan is absolutely to come back and play the Scottish Open,” said Morikawa of this July’s event, which is again taking place at The Renaissance Club but with Genesis as a new title sponsor.

“I owe a lot to that tournament for getting me ready (for The Open) and actually making me realise that I needed to change some irons.

“I come over, play the Scottish and I start hitting 9-irons to 45 feet, missing greens, and it was just frustrating. I wanted to blame it on my clubs, and rarely that's the case, but I really did. I stuck with it.

“I made some changes, and there we were at Royal St George's making a few changes on the Monday and ended up winning.”

In doing so, the Californian created history as the first player to win two majors at the first attempt. But, as he reflected on that feat in a press conference looking ahead to his title defence in the 150th Open at St Andrews in July, Morikawa almost laughed about how poorly he’d played at times the previous week on the East Lothian coast.

“If you just look at the scorecard and you look at how I played at the