Morikawa withdrew from the Players<\/a> after one hole after tweaking his back on a practice swing.<\/p>\nMuch was made about his practice sessions leading into the Masters, as range data revealed he hadn\u2019t hit a driver that went further than 279 yards\u2014showing he wasn\u2019t trusting his back enough to go after a tee shot. That obviously translated to how felt ahead of Thursday’s opening round, as he revealed in speaking with the press after his two-over 74.<\/p>\n
“It all started when I woke up. I’ve never felt this nervous, like, in my life. I’ve played in majors,” Morikawa said. “I’ve played in other events. I think it’s a trust factor, right? I think when it happened out on the course at the Players, you know, there’s a certain doubt factor of, like, is this going to happen, is this not?”<\/p>\n
The past week and a half, Morikawa got back to hitting balls again. But he said he hasn’t been able to trust the state of his back. There isn’t any physical pain at this point, he said, but mentally, he’s battling. He said his legs don’t feel comfortable. Walking the serious undulations of Augusta National has been a battle all week. Sounds like an athlete’s worst nightmare.<\/p>\n
Withdrawing went through his mind before Thursday arrived, Morikawa admitted, after testing his condition with nine holes on Tuesday and Wednesday. He also admitted he had “no idea what I’d shoot,” ahead of Thursday, but he was proud of the way he battled.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a trust factor and saying that the legs are under there that you can go fire the way I used to,” Morikawa said. “I use so much of my lower body to hit my shots that, you know, today and this past week of hitting balls, it’s been a lot of upper body just kind of firing.”<\/p>\n
“Trust me, it started immediately when I woke up. I’ve been nervous here and there throughout the practice rounds, but you never know what to expect. I slept great, and you wake up, and you are just\u2014like, I can feel, you know, just the mind racing. You have to just be able to calm yourself down. It was a long day out there. I mean, I don’t know how long we were out there, but I was out there twice the amount of time just because of the things I had to keep telling myself throughout the round.”<\/p>\n
It’s not a situation anybody would’ve expected for Morikawa, who won the AT&T Pebble Beach earlier in the year, and would’ve factored as a serious contender at the year’s first major given the return of his world-class approach game. His back had different plans. We’ll see how he’s able to battle on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUGUSTA, Ga. \u2014 Collin Morikawa has been in a ton of pressure moments. The two-time major champion says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1553,2727,2728,2066,2729,1282,82],"class_list":["post-3883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-collin-morikawa","tag-collin-morikawa","tag-collin-morikawa-back","tag-collin-morikawa-masters-2026","tag-masters-2026","tag-masters-2026-collin-morikawa-admits-hes-never-felt-this-nervous-in-my-life-on-morning-of-opening-round","tag-masters2026","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}