{"id":435537,"date":"2025-06-26T22:27:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T22:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/?p=435537"},"modified":"2025-06-26T22:27:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T22:27:43","slug":"video-collin-morikawa-defends-himself-over-media-criticism-at-rocket-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/video-collin-morikawa-defends-himself-over-media-criticism-at-rocket-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Collin Morikawa Defends Himself Over Media Criticism at Rocket Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/collin-morikawa-and-rio-takeda-rewrite-the-script-of-dominance\/\" target=\"_self\">Collin Morikawa<\/a> has defended his outburst at a reporter. The 28-year-old did not take kindly to what a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/watch-morikawa-clashes-with-reporter-over-caddie-article-dont-put-me-down-like-that\/\" target=\"_self\">reporter wrote about him<\/a> the day before and gave him a piece of his mind <strong>during<\/strong> his media duties at the Rocket Classic. He has now doubled down on his outburst and insisted he was right to defend himself to stop the media from unfairly criticizing him.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-media-max-width=\"560\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">&#8220;I have to stand up for myself because I&#8217;m not going to let someone throw little jabs at me and just make me into someone I&#8217;m not.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Collin Morikawa followed up on his exchange with a reporter during his pre-tournament press conference at the Rocket Classic. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wuYcADZjJr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/wuYcADZjJr<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GolfDigest\/status\/1938299484049383867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 26, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Morikawa Strongly Disagrees With How He Was Portrayed<\/h2>\n<p>Morikawa expressed his displeasure after reading an article that, he believes, portrayed him in a negative light. The article suggested Morikawa made the media wait two and a half hours before speaking to them, implying that he was dismissive or avoiding questions. Morikawa strongly disagreed with how the reporter portrayed that interaction and clearly expressed his feelings during his pre-tournament press conference.<\/p>\n<p>The 28-year-old believed the writer took his words out of context and made him appear disrespectful to the media. He explained that he was spending time with his pro-am partners, people who had paid a lot of money to play alongside him, and that showing them attention and respect was important to him.<\/p>\n<p>This controversy comes at a time when Morikawa&#8217;s performance on the course has also been under scrutiny. The former PGA Championship and Open Championship winner has not had a top-ten finish in his last five events and is still searching for his first win since the Zozo Championship in October 2023. Adding to the pressure, Morikawa recently parted ways with his caddie, Joe Greiner, after only five events together. For this week\u2019s tournament, his close friend KK Limbhasut is carrying the bag, but no decision has been made yet about who will be on the bag for The Open Championship next month.<\/p>\n<h2>Morikawa Says He Had To Stand Up For Himself<\/h2>\n<p>Morikawa has come in for criticism in some quarters, with many of the opinion that he took the issue too far by giving the reporter a public dressing down. But Morikawa insists he was well within his rights to do so. The two-time major winner also made it clear that he is not willing to let the media shape the public\u2019s view of him unfairly.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_435541\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-435541\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-435541\" src=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2025\/06\/USATSI_26437262_168416623_lowres-1200x800.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-435541\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jun 13, 2025; Oakmont, Pennsylvania, USA; Collin Morikawa watches after his shot from the 12th tee during the second round of the U.S. Open golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cYou know, at a point you can only follow so much and you have to stand up for yourself,\u201d he said. \u201c&#8230;I have to stand up for myself because I&#8217;m not going to let someone throw a little jabs at me and just make me into someone I&#8217;m not. Because I know who I am and that&#8217;s all that matters. I know my people, my team, my family know who I am. But this whole perception out there right now it&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s a little ridiculous\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: \u00a9 Bill Streicher-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Collin Morikawa has defended his outburst at a reporter. The 28-year-old did not take kindly to what a reporter wrote about him the day before and gave him a piece of his mind during his media duties at the Rocket Classic. He has now doubled down on his outburst and insisted he was right to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5425,"featured_media":435542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19],"tags":[119,8082,8126,83,124],"class_list":["post-435537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-pga","tag-collin-morikawa","tag-joe-greiner","tag-rocket-classic","tag-the-open-championship","tag-zozo-championship"],"modified_by":"Ajayi Segun","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435543,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435537\/revisions\/435543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}