With under two weeks – including the upcoming U.S. Open – remaining until the deadline to finalize the field in the men’s Olympic golf competition, no player has taken advantage of a late surge more than American Collin Morikawa.

After a series of less-than-stellar performances (by his standards) to start the year caused a drop to 20th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Morikawa finished T3 at the Masters Tournament to jumpstart a stretch of four top-10 finishes in five events. Over the past two weeks, Morikawa has finished T4 at the PGA Championship and fourth at the Charles Schwab Challenge. The hot stretch has moved him up to ninth in the world, surpassing Patrick Cantlay and Max Homa to become the No. 4-ranked American in the world. Countries can only have more than two representatives if they have more than two within the top 15 of the Olympic Golf Ranking (OGR) with a maximum of four players, making the fourth position amongst Americans a coveted one.

After bursting onto the scene as a rookie in 2019 and into the 2020 season, Collin Morikawa won the 2020 PGA Championship and 2021 Open Championship to solidify himself as one of the top players in the game. He entered the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 as the highest-ranked player in the field and just missed out on a podium performance, falling in a seven-man playoff for the Bronze medal to C.T. Pan.

“I knew -- let's call it two, three months ago where I stood, and I knew I had to start playing some good golf and we've played some good golf to put myself in contention,” Morikawa said. “So at the end of the day, these next two weeks are going to be big and I know what's at stake.”

Elsewhere in the OGR, Austria’s Bernd Wiesberger has leaped into the top-60, the threshold needed to qualify for the men’s competition, after a T2 finish in the DP World Tour’s European Open last week. Wiesberger, who finished T11 eight years ago at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is now likely to join countryman Sepp Straka in representing Austria in Paris later this summer.

With less than two weeks on the calendar prior to the cutoff, all eyes will be on finishes at major events such as the Memorial Tournament, the Volvo Car Scandinavian Mixed and the U.S. Open.