Golfer Collin Morikawa had his chances in 2024 but realizes now he wasn’t quite ready to win again.
The 28-year-old two-time major champion is well-positioned and better prepared entering the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
“I never felt like my game was fully in control,” he said of last season. “There’s a difference of like going into a week and finding something that week and just kind of playing with it, which you can win; I’ve done it in the past. But if you want to go on a nice stretch, you really have to be in control.”
Morikawa was in command much of Saturday at Bay Hill Club and Lodge, carding a 5-under-par 67 to leave him 10-under through 54 holes and ahead of Russell Henley (-9) and Corey Conners (-8).
“It was fairly stress-free,” Morikawa said.
Now for the hard part.
A trio of elite ball-strikers aim to get off the schneid Sunday while keeping their cool on a second-shot golf course demanding precision iron play to avoid trouble lurking on every swing.
“It’s not very easy out there, and you got to stay really patient and not really force anything,” Conners said.
Once on the greens, the challenge intensifies. Putting surfaces were glassy and turning from an emerald green hue to a light brown crust as the third round progressed.
“Any time you put your putter down and you start sliding on your putter, that’s when you know the greens are getting pretty slick,” said Jason Day, who sits 7-under after three consecutive birdies capped a third-round 69.
Conditions loom to get only tougher Sunday when temperatures are expected to reach around 85 degrees to further dry out the putting surfaces while whipping winds are set to arrive ahead of a cold front headed for central Florida.
“It’s going to be a lot more difficult day,” said Day, the 2016 API winner. “It’s just kind of survive, get close to it on the back side … then you never know what happens.”
The quartet atop the leaderboard will have to stare down their demons and overcome internal doubts.
Morikawa’s last win was the Zozo Championship in October 2023 — his sixth victory on Tour —and 25 PGA Tour starts ago. The 33-year-old Conners’ last win was 43 events ago at the 2023 Valero Texas Open, where he picked up his only other Tour win in 2019. Henley, 35, is winless in 56 starts since his World Wide Technology Championship in November 2022.
With 10 top-10s in his last 23 starts, including a tie for fourth at last year’s API, Henley seems overdue for win No. 5 on Tour.
“My last three years have been my best three years of golf of my life,” he said.
Morikawa has been considered the game’s best iron player since he burst on the scene with wins at the 2020 PGA Championship and 2021 Open Championship. But he said he hasn’t been striking the ball to his standard until now.
“It’s been awhile since I’ve hit my irons like this,” he said. “Just start lines, amount of cut, we’re looking all the way back to 2021.”
Each of the trio atop the leaderboard ranks in the top 35 on Tour in greens in regulation but has showcased the breadth of his game at Bay Hill.
Morikawa leads the field in strokes-gained approach, ranks fourth off the tee and is seventh around greens; Henley is first around the greens, 14th in putting and 24th in approach; and Conners is fifth in approach, 11th around the greens and 13th in putting.
Day ranks third in putting, where he remains among the world’s best, as he seeks his first win since the 2023 AT&T Byron Nelson — a victory that ended a five-year winless drought for the former world No. 1.
The 37-year-old Aussie and 13-time PGA Tour champion would return to the winner’s circle after recently reuniting with the man who helped him reach the top of the game. After a seven-year split, Day and longtime coach and one-time caddie Colin Swatton are back together.
Day met Swatton at Kooralbyn International School in Australia when Day was a troubled 13-year-old.
“We’ve got a lot of history together,” he said. “So it’s nice to be able to pull the old-school team back.”
A lot of pieces will have to fall into place for whoever emerges from a long and challenging day to earn a $4 million winner’s check and capture one of golf’s most coveted prizes.
The first 54 holes at Palmer’s brutish layout proved those off their game will be exposed.
Shane Lowry, the 36-hole leader, was shaky from the outset Saturday, opening with consecutive bogeys he would offset with birdies on the par-5 sixth and par-3 7th, curling in a 23-footer. But he lost ground with a double-bogey 6 on the 11th hole after he twice found the rough and then fell apart with another double on the par-4 13th to finish the day six shots behind Morikawa.
Playing partner Wyndham Clark, who led after Day 1, was wild off the tee and carded a front-nine 40 on his way to matching Lowry’s 76.
Meanwhile, world No. 2 Rory McIlroy kept inching into the mix only to be undone by a sloppy finish featuring three bogeys in the final four holes to leave him 3-under par and needing a historic Sunday round from seven shots down along with plenty of help from the golfers ahead.
Morikawa, who ended the day with a closing birdie, doesn’t plan to give an inch and provide an opening.
“The guys that are winning on a constant basis, they’re playing free,” he said. “That’s how I’m going to go out tomorrow.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
