There’s Dustin and then there’s everyone else
Long-hitting Johnson brings the full package to Augusta, and his level of talent is ‘just crazy’
AUGUSTA, Ga.
Jimmy Walker was asked the other day if he envies some of the smaller players like Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas who can still hit the ball a long way.
“I don’t get jealous because I can hit it by both of them,” Walker replied. Then he added: “Dustin, not so much.”
This is where we are with Dustin Johnson at this point in his career. There is Johnson and then there is everyone else. The 32-year-old from Columbia, S.C., has always been a terribly imposing masher of the golf ball, but one plagued by Sunday meltdowns. After his first major win at the U.S. Open last year — and having claimed the No. 1 ranking and won three straight tournaments coming in to Augusta — Johnson has separated himself from the field just a bit. He is only the fourth player in history to enter the Masters on a three-win streak and the first to do so since 1976. And he’s only the second player ever to open a fourpoint gap at the top of the world rankings at this point in the season. Tiger Woods did that seven times.
There was always the question of what Johnson would do if he could fully marshal his prodigious talent. Now we have the answer: Dustin Johnson in full is something to behold.
“Dustin is just crazy,” said Fowler. “He’s just, in a way, kind of a freak of nature. He’s one of the best drivers of the golf ball and the longest out here and one of the straightest.”
Not that Johnson himself seems particularly excited by his current run of form, which is perhaps to be expected from someone who can hit a ball 340 yards and look kind of bored while doing it.
“I mean, golf, it’s a funny game,” said Johnson. “It doesn’t matter how good you’re playing, it’s a funny game. Same goes for this week. If I want to win here, everything’s going to have to go well for me. You know, I’ve got a lot of confidence in my game now, especially with the way I’ve been playing the last few tournaments. But, you know, anything can happen.”
Indeed, late Wednesday came news that Johnson slipped on a staircase at his rental home and hurt his lower back, though his manager said he hopes to compete. He’s in the final group on Thursday, so he has time for treatment.
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 double-bogey 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 twostroke 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-to-right 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-toleft 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.
“It doesn’t matter how good you’re playing, it’s a funny game. Same goes for this week.” — Dustin Johnson