Two days after losing to Russell Henley in heartbreaking fashion at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Collin Morikawa was finally ready to talk about it.

“I fully am aware of how it played out,” the two-time major champ said on Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass ahead of the Players Championship. “But I just have to move on and I have to learn from it. I have to keep getting better. Like I always say, like, you know, why not win this week?”

It was an impressive response from the 28-year-old, but it still had some wondering why he couldn’t have said something similar on Sunday night at Bay Hill.

Q. You seem to have rationalised what happened Sunday to a great extent, but in the moment you didn’t. I want to understand a little better what you were feeling, why you didn’t stop to talk or anything.

COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, just heated. Just pissed. Like I don’t owe anyone anything. No offense to you guys, but for me in the moment of that time, I didn’t want to be around anyone. Like, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t need any sorries. I didn’t need any “good playings.” Like, you’re just pissed.

Honestly, if it was an hour later I would have talked to you guys, but an hour later I was on my way out to here, because I didn’t want to be in Orlando anymore. But I just felt like I put everything I did into the, let’s call it, seven hours of my time being there, right, a few hours before showing up, physio, workout. Look, my entire routine, right. I was just drained.

I get it. Like you guys are there to figure out how we played and how things went, but in my perspective, like I just didn’t want to talk to anyone, and I think that’s fair to myself, you know.

Well, at least one former PGA Tour player, Rocco Mediate, didn’t find Morikawa’s reasoning fair. And he didn’t hold back on his weekly SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio show, “The Rocco Hour,” on Wednesday night.

“Biggest bunch of garbage you could ever say, period. I mean, that is the dumbest, most selfish garbage you could ever say,” Mediate said. “Mr. Palmer would’ve hunted him down. Trust me on that one because he told me one thing, Mr. Palmer told me one thing that stuck with me. [He said,] ‘You know what, Rock, it’s real easy to go in and talk to somebody when you won or when you’ve played well, but can you do it when you don’t? That’s the key.’ Obviously he can’t, OK, so stop talking to me about, ‘I didn’t wanna talk to anybody.’ Your job is to tell people what happened. I don’t care about your workout in the morning and all that other garbage. Tell me what happened. You lost? You lost. You got beat? That’s what happens. Guess what? Golf’s hard.”

It seems Mediate was particularly put off by the fact this happened at a tournament whose namesake, Arnold Palmer, was always lauded for how he handled the media in an effort to showcase the game.

“So please stop trying to tell me, ‘I didn’t feel like talking to somebody.’ I mean, if Mr. Palmer was there, he’d have grabbed, I’m telling you, it wouldn’t have been pretty, it would’ve been public, too,” Mediate continued in the clip. “You don’t need to act that way. The Tour does not need that garbage at all. I’m not sure if I was clear. Was I clear or was that a little ambiguous? Man up, talk about it and be done. He said, ‘I don’t owe anybody anything.’ Actually, he does. The people that are watching. The reporters that bust their behinds to write stories about our sorry faces. And I get this? No, pathetic. You can say it. You can put it all, I don’t care. Come to me, Collin. We’ll talk about it.”

Morikawa is one of the favourites to win this week at TPC Sawgrass. But we’re going to list him as a longshot to come on Rocco’s show anytime soon.

Main Image: Richard Heathcote