IF I WANT TO WIN HERE, EVERYTHING’S GOING TO HAVE TO GO RIGHT.

Johnson certainly has experience with strange things happening to him at majors. He was on the way to a playoff at the PGA Championship in 2010 when he discovered he had grounded a club in a Whistling Straits bunker that he thought was a waste bunker (it wasn’t). He was in contention at the Open Championship the following season when a late doublebogey killed his chances. And two years ago, he had 12 feet for eagle on the 18th hole at the U.S. Open, but three-putted and lost to Jordan Spieth. The major championship resume was becoming very Greg Norman-esque.

His win last year, though, which included surviving a Sunday two-stroke penalty for an oscillating ball — note: not a dirty joke — now opens up the possibility that Johnson could go on the kind of major run that Norman never managed. When he is playing well, he makes the game look frighteningly simple. Johnson was asked this week about his pre-shot routine, which is a topic that can send many Tour players into long and complicated treatises. Here is his complete response: “I get my (yardage) number and kind of where I want to hit it and try to picture the shot going in.” And then he hits it.

That sort of golf-savant approach to the game has served him well in recent months. Johnson says at the Doral tournament last March, his normal draw with the driver resulted in a couple of bad shots that cost him the tournament. So he started hitting a fade. Most pros go through arduous processes when they try to change their shot shape, but Johnson makes it sound like he just up and did it. Did it take long to become comfortable with the left-toright shot off the tee? “I don’t know, it didn’t take me long,” he says. “I liked it.” Boom, done, hits a fade now, has won six times since, including that U.S. Open. Ho hum.

Johnson says he will cut it all around Augusta this week, at least with the driver, even though the course usually favours a right-to-left shot off the tee. “If I need a draw, I’ll just hit a 3-wood,” he said. When you are crazy long, you have such options.

Johnson was asked if there was a point when he realized he could become the top player in the world. “When Tiger stopped playing,” he said. That got some laughter, but Johnson had a point. Few pros elicit the kind of comments from their contemporaries that Woods did, but Johnson gets a bit of that. They do marvel at the way he hits it. Johnson was asked about Fowler’s freakof-nature description. It was pointed out that Fowler meant it in a nice way.

“Yeah, I realize that,” he said, laughing. “When they are saying nice things about you, that’s a good thing.”

He is the hottest golfer in the world, leading the Tour in driving distance and playing a course where it helps to be long.

But you know, anything can happen.