Collin Morikawa didn’t just end a drought at Pebble Beach, he reminded us what actually matters.

Well, I have this sweet spot for Collin Morikawa. He’s the same age as my son and graduated at the same time from the same university. And Collin’s PGA career took off, winning two majors right off the bat. So…yeah, I am a huge fan.

Which is exactly why the last 847 days have been hard to watch.

Two and a half years without a win. For a two-time major champion who looked, early in his career, like he might be the cleanest ball-striker we’d seen in a generation. The questions started quietly, then got louder. Is he done? What happened to him? Did he lose it?

He heard all of it. You don’t go through a drought that long at that level without feeling the noise every single week. He even said it himself afterward, “I’m hard on myself.” And knowing Collin, that’s not just a throwaway line. That’s someone who holds himself to a standard that most people can’t even comprehend, eating every missed cut and every Sunday fade like a personal failure.

The putt dropped. Then he broke.

When the birdie putt fell on 18, Morikawa pumped his fist and then completely let go. Tears. A long, tight embrace with his wife, Kat, on the 18th green, the Pacific Ocean crashing behind them, her face wet too. The cool, composed, machine-like golfer we’re used to seeing just… dissolved.

“Put golf aside. We’re actually expecting later this year, in a few months. We just started telling people this week. We said, what a better way, the best way to announce it to the world if I was able to come out and win.”

Baby. Due in May. First child. Live on CBS television, while Kat stood nearby, still wiping tears off her face.

Think about what she carried into that week. Pregnant. Holding a secret. Watching him dig out of an eight-shot deficit, watching him shoot 62 on Saturday and hit all 18 greens — something only six players had done at Pebble Beach since 1985. Then watching him bogey 17 on Sunday, then stand on the 18th tee for nearly 20 minutes waiting while the group ahead sorted out a mess, wind whipping off the Monterey Peninsula, one shot between them and the moment they’d planned for.

He birdied 18. She cried. He cried. The secret became a headline.

“I think believing in myself,” he said when asked what he was most proud of. “My team, my wife, they all knew it was going to come. I never let go of that.”

But knowing it’s coming and living through the wait are two entirely different things. The doubt doesn’t take days off. Every close call that doesn’t close is a tax on your confidence that keeps compounding.

“There’s so much to life. There’s so much to enjoy.”

He’s going to be a father in a few months. He stood on the most iconic golf course in America, on Valentine’s weekend, with his pregnant wife in his arms, let himself feel all of it, and said I’m speechless right now, which, honestly, was the most human thing you can say at the moment.

And as someone who’s watched this kid since he was in college…I’ll be honest. That embrace on 18 got me too.