Golfer Collin Morikawa has multiple things to celebrate after winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
When asked why the moment was “so special” with wife Katherine Zhu after the win on Sunday, February 15 — his first victory on Tour in over two years — Morikawa, 29, replied, “A lot of reasons.”
“Putting golf aside, we are actually expecting later this year, in a few months. We just started telling people this week,” he told CBS Sports’ Amanda Balionis while smiling. “We said what a better way, the best way, to just announce it to the world if I was able to come out and win.”
He continued, “There’s so much to life. There’s so much to enjoy. I’m hard on myself, like I talked about yesterday. I’m just so thankful for the people around me. My team, Kat, my wife, my parents, my brother. I’m speechless right now.”
Morikawa and Zhu, a marathon runner and former golfer, tied the knot in 2022. Three years later, Morikawa admitted it can be “very hard” to focus on anything other than golf when things aren’t going his way.
“Golf is a big part of my life and who I am,” Morikawa exclusively told Us Weekly in 2025. “When it’s going great, it’s very easy to be able to separate yourself. But when it’s not going as well, your mind is constantly thinking about golf. ‘How do I keep getting better?’ Because that’s the chase. That’s what we’re all trying to accomplish: getting better every single day. ‘How do we keep improving? What do I need to do in order to give myself a chance to win on Sunday?’ It’s just a never-ending cycle.”
Morikawa shared that golfers are forced to be a different level of “mentally strong” than athletes who compete in other sports.
“It takes a toll out of you,” he said. “I don’t think people realize the stress it puts on our bodies that we go through every single day. We are trying to perfect this game, essentially, that we can’t perfect. We can’t go 4-for-4 with five RBIs and two home runs. No one is going to have 18 birdies in a round. There’s always going to be struggles that you have to maintain and balance. That’s a big part that I think people have a misconception about.”
Morikawa credited Zhu with being beneficial for his mental health.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a necessity for everyone, but it’s a necessity for me,” Morikawa said about his marriage. “I’m so proud of her. I think the motivation she gives me with what she does with her running, it pushes me every day to get better. She played golf in college and stopped playing after a year of playing pro, and was able to travel with me.”
Morikawa continued, “It’s lucky to have your best friend by your side and be able to go out and enjoy life, travel the world, see new places and do what I love. I’m very thankful that she’s given up a lot of her things that she loved to do and allow a lot of her time to come out on this journey.”
