.. NOW FOR SEASON TO SAVOUR
Johnson will be hard to shift at top of rankings after his dominant display in Hawaii
FOR a guy who hits the golf ball distances that would compel most of us to hail a taxi it’s no surprise Dustin Johnson’s message for 2018 was booming.
Loud and ominously clear the world No.1 roared his declaration of intent for the year ahead with an awesome, overpowering performance to win the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.
Leaving the 33 other Tour winners in his wake to claim his opening event of the year by a colossal eight strokes, none of the assembled also-rans could be in any doubt.
Once again DJ will be the man to beat.
Sure, the latest hotlyanticipated return of Tiger Woods has hogged the headlines of recent weeks.
And bet your bottom dollar on Rory McIlroy dominating the chat over the next two weeks as he builds up to his return from a three-month sabbatical to regain full strength.
But when it comes to doing the talking on the course it was the towering man from South Carolina who was out there proclaiming his mission statement in the clearest possible terms.
Now it’s up to the rest to find an answer if his dominance at the top of the rankings is to be challenged.
Of course the man least likely to get carried away with the emphatic nature of his flying start to 2018 is Johnson himself.
As a thinker, he is as uncomplicated as he is brawny – hit it high, send it long and chip it close – and such simplicity is a key element of his success.
Anyone of a more thoughtful nature might have been haunted by the collapse suffered in his previous competitive outing last October when DJ let slip a six-shot lead as Justin Rose snatched the WGC Champions event in China.
But when you don’t think much beyond the next shot, or seemingly about much at all, it’s hard for the demons to take root.
Typically, the 33-year-old will be in no rush to read into what kind of psychological blow his dominant start might inflict on those pretenders who seek to topple him from the summit.
But just because he doesn’t dwell THE VOICE OF GOLF on it doesn’t mean the others won’t. Johnson might not give much more than a second thought to stopping six inches short of a hole in one at a 433-yard par four. “It was flush,” he later deadpanned with his customary gift for understatement.
But it’s fair to say his peers puffed their cheeks in exasperation at the guy’s power.
Yes, the design of the Plantation Course in Hawaii – with its wide fairways and flat greens – couldn’t have been better tailored to Johnson’s game if he had sketched the plans himself. Of course there will be IN RECORD SPORT sterner questions ahead when it comes to the challenge of adding to a collection of Majors that still only stands at the solitary US Open title he won at Oakmont in 2016.
Excitement is already building, as it always does from this point of the year onwards, for the US Masters in April where Johnson will return with some unfinished business.
This after all is the tournament he was widely expected to win by a distance last year, so hot was his run of form going into Augusta, only to have his big opportunity cruelly ruined by an accident when he fell on stairs on the eve of the first round. With his supreme long game and an immeasurably improved wedge play that proved the key to his rise over the last two years from a good Tour pro to the best in the world, he has to be installed as the favourite again.
At worst, joint favourite alongside Jordan Spieth.
There’s plenty more golf to come first and the aforementioned returns of McIlroy and Woods are bound to bring further twists to the narrative as the build-up to Augusta gathers pace.
But for now what must be going through the minds of Johnson’s rivals to witness his relentless power knowing when those big shoulders get in the rhythm there is little they can do to combat him.