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Many professional athletes have a chilly relationship with the reporters tasked with keeping tabs on them, and that definitely includes Collin Morikawa. The golfer has made it pretty clear he’s not a huge fan of the press, and that stance hasn’t changed based on what went down ahead of the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
It’s been close to two years since Collin Morikawa got his last win on the PGA Tour, and while he currently occupies the fifth spot in the Official World Golf Rankings, he’s riding a string of underwhelming finishes in tournaments where his game has failed to click.
In April, the 28-year-old parted ways with J.J. Jakovac, the only caddie he’d worked with since joining the PGA Tour. He tapped Joe Greiner to replace him, but that experiment lasted for a grand total of five events before the golfer announced he’d opted to make another change on the bag heading into the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club this week.
It was only natural that the reporters dispatched to that event would want to get some insight into that decision and his plans moving forward (his former college teammate KK Limbhasut will be filling in this week but won’t be the permanent replacement).
Alan Schupack of Golfweek attempted to broach that subject with Morikawa while he was gearing up for a practice round only to be rebuffed, as the golfer asked him to wait until the press conference he was scheduled to appear at later in the day while noting “I’m with my pro-am partners now.”
Schupack originally included that quote in the article he wrote about the caddie change, and it’s safe to say Morikawa was not thrilled with the piece based on what he had to say when the reporter got the chance to follow up on his initial inquiry at the media session.
Collin Morikawa had a tense exchange with a reporter at today’s press conference over reports about his most recent caddie switch. pic.twitter.com/kJIuYSqLhs
— GOLF.com (@GOLF_com) June 25, 2025
He said he didn’t know who was going to be his caddie at the British Open next month before taking Schupack to task for the way he framed his response, saying:
“I read your article that you wrote. Look, I’m not here to tell people how to do their jobs, but I don’t get why you would make me sound bad because you put out my quote that I was playing with pro-am partners out front.
Those guys are paying a lot of money. They’re very important to the community. They’re very important to the Rocket Classic, and for you to put out a quote like that—to put me down and saying, ‘Hey, wait two and a half hours.’
I mean, you called me up on the first tee, you know? I’m not going to tell you how to do your job. You can write whatever you want. This is America. But don’t put me down like that because it’s two-and-a-half hours, Adam.”
Shupack responded by saying he wasn’t trying to cast Morikawa in a bad light, but the subject of the piece clearly interpreted the intent much, much differently.
The exchange came a few months after Morikawa bluntly stated he doesn’t owe the media anything after declining to speak with the press following a second-place finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational before doubling down on that stance at The Masters.
The numbers suggest Morikawa isn’t going to magically benefit from a caddie change if he doesn’t also start focusing on his distance on the course, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how things pan out.