Collin Morikawa Knows What His Priorities Are

OPEN champion Collin Morikawa says that winning majors will always matter more to him than money. 

That is, of course easy for Morikawa to say - he has already earned more than $14m in prize money, even though he is just 25 years of age and has been a pro for less than three years.

But it does give some idea of the scale of the problem facing the Saudi-back tour. They are throwing tens of millions of dollars at a sport where even journeymen live a millionaire lifestyle and have opted to delay their planned league until 2024 in favour of hugely lucrative individual events.

They claim that 15 of the world's top 100 players have sought releases from the PGA Tour to play at Centurion Club from June 9 to 11 although it is interesting to note that none of these individuals have been named.

Morikawa is definitely not one of them, and says he has no interest. He said: “My alliance is to the PGA Tour. Will I still watch what's going on? I mean, yeah. You're curious to what's going on. But do I care who's going to be playing or do I care who's going to be making money? No, not at all.

"At the end of the day I'm here to win majors. I'm here to win PGA Tour tournaments. Hopefully return and defend my Race to Dubai title. There's a lot of other things that are on my mind and a lot of goals that I set at the beginning of the year that I look forward to."

Morikawa is certain he is not alone in prioritising tournament victories over money, but admits that he has not thought too much about whether players deserve a greater share of the revenue generated by major championships.

"Sure, I'm guessing that the majors do make a lot of money and there's never anything bad about making more money, but when you say something like that and you put us in the boat of the only other thing that could keep us here is the money, then that's just not true," the world No 3 said.

"Because if that were the case, then you would have had 100 out of 100 sign up for this other Tour that's happening, but you don't, right? You have the 15, the unknown 15."