La Cañada Flintridge native Collin Morikawa, an LCHS graduate who is one of the world’s top golfers, has qualified for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, where he will represent the United States.
Morikawa will compete in the men’s portion of the Olympic golf competition Aug. 1-4 at Le Golf National, located just outside Paris in Guyancourt, France. The 60-golfer field — finalized last week based on the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) — will play a single 18-hole round each day, with the top three finishers earning gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively.
Morikawa, who graduated from LCHS in 2015 and is ranked seventh in the OWGR, will join fellow Americans Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Wyndham Clark in France. The top 15 golfers in the OWGR automatically qualified for the Olympics, with a maximum of four golfers per country being selected from that group. After selecting participants from the top 15, the Olympic committee selected up to two golfers per country from the remainder of the OWGR.
This will mark Morikawa’s second consecutive Olympic Games; he placed fourth and narrowly missed out on a medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Morikawa has won six PGA Tour competitions, including a pair of major victories at the 2020 PGA Championship and 2021 British Open. He has five top-five finishes in 15 events played on the PGA Tour this year. Morikawa, a four-time All-American at the University of California, Berkeley, was the 2019 Pac-12 Conference player of the year, according to calbears.com.
First published in the June 27 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
