JOHNSON ASSUMES HIS PERCH
It seemed so obvious, and yet so impossible, that this hulking talent would be world No. 1
Anyone who has spent much time around a PGA Tour driving range has had something of a Dustin Johnson religious experience.
In 2013 at the RBC Canadian Open, I happened to be standing on the range at Glen Abbey waiting for an interview when Johnson sauntered to a spot nearby and began hitting balls.
When the driver came out of the bag and Johnson sent moonshot after moonshot in a high, curling arc to the very limits of the range, and probably a few into the nicely groomed backyards of Oakville, Ont., beyond it, the thought occurred: It is not possible to hit golf balls better than that. This is nirvana.
Lots of players mash the ball, but it tends to look like they have to put a lot of effort into it. Bubba Watson aims two fairways to the right and hits it 370 yards in the air for it to finish 330 yards from where he started. Even peak Tiger took such a furious lash at the ball that his late-career back problems look obvious in retrospect.
Johnson, though, uncorks his six-foot-four frame into the ball almost casually, and it explodes. The other thought that occurs when you watch him do it up close: How is this guy not the best player in the world?
He is, technically, now. With a win on Sunday at the Genesis Open, Johnson, the American who has married into Canadian royalty, took over the top spot in the world golf rankings for the first time: The Great Son(-inlaw).
It is not surprising at all, given his absurd talent, but also very surprising because for a long time, before he sat at the dinner table with the Gretzkys, Johnson looked destined to be a couldabeen legend — as in, he could have been the best in the world if tournaments lasted only 70 holes.
That Canadian Open in 2013 was far from his most visible Sunday adventure, but it serves as a nice microcosm of the first eight years of Johnson’s career. He was a few groups ahead of leader Brent Snedeker, but with a birdie on the 16th hole — his fourth birdie on a Glen Abbey par-5 on the day — he climbed into a tie for the lead. On the 17th hole, with the short par-five 18th still to come, Johnson hit his tee shot halfway to Pearson International. He would triple-bogey the hole, which included two whacks from a fairway bunker, and Snedeker won by three strokes.
This was Johnson in full: as capable as anyone of reaching the top of the leaderboard, but also quite capable of a spectacular implosion once he got there. The narrative was set at the 2010 PGA Championship in Wisconsin, when he missed a playoff due to a penalty for grounding his club in a Whistling Straits bunker that looked for all the world like a waste bunker, and it continued through the 2011 British Open (late double bogey) and up to the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in University Place, Wash., when Johnson had a 12-foot eagle putt on the final hole to jump into the lead, but missed it and then missed the short birdie putt to spare Jordan Spieth the trouble of a playoff.
In the middle of all that, he took a six-month leave of absence to deal with what were described as personal issues. Johnson denied a report that it was a cocaine-related suspension and has since said alcohol was at the root of the problem.
Between the heartbreaking collapses and the off-course struggles, it seemed like rather a lot for Johnson to overcome if he was going to finally ascend to the heights of his promise. And then he did. Johnson won the U.S. Open at the Oakmont Country Club just outside Pittsburgh last year, even surviving a highly controversial penalty in the final round to do it, and has won three more times since, including last weekend’s victory, which allowed him to move past Jason Day in the world rankings. At 32, Johnson is finally where many long ago suspected he would be, and then just as many figured he would not.
Staying there, though, would prove an even more impressive feat, if only because there’s an uneasy-is-the-head-that-wears-the-crown thing going on with the world rankings these days.
Spieth, with his back-to-back major wins in 2015, looked to have a firm grip on top spot but has now slid back to sixth in the rankings. Day became the world No. 1 last March and won the Players in May, but hasn’t won since. Rory McIlroy has twice climbed to the top in recent years and has twice been surpassed. Adam Scott was No. 1 for 11 weeks in 2014. Those four are all bunched within the top seven of the rankings, along with Henrik Stenson and Hideki Matsuyama, who has two PGA Tour wins in 2017. Any one of them could heat up and make Johnson’s time at world No. 1 quite brief.
But he will defend his U.S. Open title this year at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, which is about an hour’s drive south of Whistling Straits. For Johnson, it could make quite the bookend to an eventful seven years.