Collin Morikawa won his seventh PGA Tour title Sunday, and just thirty seconds later, the trophy stopped being the story. Standing on the 18th green at Pebble Beach Golf Links, moments after tapping in the birdie that ended 847 days without a victory, Morikawa turned to a CBS reporter and shifted register entirely.

“Put golf aside,” he said. “We’re actually expecting later this year… There’s so much to life, there’s so much to enjoy, and I’m hard on myself like I talked about, I’m just so thankful for the people around me, my team, my wife, my parents, my brother. I’m speechless right now.”

He and Katherine had started telling people that week. The win, he said, felt like the best way to announce it to the world.

The 29-year-old later revealed the baby is expected to be born in May. Morikawa’s wife, Kat, was on hand to watch him win. She was teary-eyed as Morikawa holed his putt, and the two had a lengthy embrace on the 18th green.

But the road to the 18th green was not clean. Morikawa entered Sunday trailing 54-hole leader Akshay Bhatia by two shots, carrying a record that had become its own weight. He went 45 starts over more than two years to finally win.

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He birdied 15 from 30 feet. He followed with a 6-iron into 8 feet for another birdie. A bogey on the par-3 17th put him back level with the lead. Then, with Min Woo Lee already in the clubhouse at 21-under, Morikawa split the fairway on 18 with a 3-wood, sent a mid-iron just off the green, and rolled a putt to inside a foot. Birdie. One shot clear and the drought was over.

Scottie Scheffler had applied every form of pressure available. A final-round 9-under 63, the lowest of his week. Three eagles, holes 2, 6, and 18, a PGA Tour career first. He drained 151 feet of putts on a Sunday that started with him eight shots back. Scheffler’s top-10 streak extended to 18 consecutive events. It was not enough.

The win that framed Sunday actually arrived Saturday. Morikawa’s third-round 62 — 10-under, 11 birdies, one bogey  — featured all 18 greens hit in regulation and 6.46 strokes gained on approach, the best ball-striking round of his career by that measure. He was nearly three strokes better on approach than the next best performer in the field that day.

During his post-round conversation with Balionis, Morikawa acknowledged the internal tension that has followed him through the drought: “I am one of the hardest on myself, and I think we all are, but sometimes, you just keep pushing yourself in the wrong direction.”

Sunday was the correction.

The $3.6 million winner’s purse moved him to third in the FedEx Cup standings — the first Signature Event title of the 2026 PGA Tour season, secured by one shot at 22-under par.

Pebble Beach and the moments that outlast the leaderboard

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am has produced these intersections before — competitive outcomes that carry personal weight beyond the final score. In 1984, Hale Irwin watched his approach on 18 ricochet off ocean rocks to three feet, converting a playoff-winning birdie after a shot he had already cursed.

In 2000, Tiger Woods erased an eight-shot deficit with a final-round 65, a performance Jim Nantz called inhuman. In 2012, Phil Mickelson fired a 64 at 41 years old to claim his fifth Pro-Am title, citing his grandfather’s history with the course as the emotional undercurrent of the week.

The venue produces these moments because of what it is: a pro-am format that places professional pressure alongside personal visibility, set on a coastline that punishes and rewards in equal measure. Sunday’s announcement, made on the 18th green during a live national broadcast with Katherine Zhu standing nearby, fits that lineage precisely.