Johnson avoids wind
But world’s No. 1 loses out to injury
AUGUSTA, Ga. — One misstep can finish you at the Masters. Even one at your house.
On a day when the winds were whipping around Augusta National and getting the best of all but one of the best golfers in the world, Dustin Johnson was whipped before he started after tumbling down the staircase at his rental home near the course Tuesday night.
Before the 81st Masters had begun, the No. 1 player in the world was done.
Johnson spent a sleepless night alternating between hot and cold packs on his bruised left elbow and sore lower back but the more time passed the tighter his back became. He thought perhaps he could work things out on the practice range yesterday before his late tee time, but when 2:03 p.m. came around he walked to the first tee with playing partners Bubba Watson and Jimmy Walker and informed them he was finished without having sent a ball in flight.
“As I was making some swings on the range it was about 80 percent,’’ said Johnson, who arrived at Augusta having won his last three tour events and playing the best golf of his life. “It’s just so tight. It just wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t get through my back swing. Every time, right at impact, it would just catch so I just don’t feel like there’s any chance of my competing. It hurts.’’
After leaving the range, Johnson took some additional practice swings near the putting green, hoping something might change. Nothing had but the wind, which was now howling. As was Johnson’s back.
“I want to play,’’ Johnson said. “I’m playing probably the best golf of my career and I look forward to this tournament every year. To have a freak accident happen after I got back from the course, it’s tough.
“I didn’t get much sleep but that isn’t the issue. The issue is I just can’t swing.
Johnson had unwisely forgotten what your mom used to tell you not to do. He ran down the stairs in his stocking feet, his feet went out from under him and both he and the Masters were suddenly topsy turvy.
That circumstance existed all day as high winds gusting to over 30 mph played havoc with everyone. The later your work day began the harder it was, as tournament favorites Rory McIlroy and Jason Day, ranked No. 2 and 3 in the world, found out.
Both struggled to keep the ball in the short grass, McIlroy bogeying 1, 3 and 8 to go 3-over even before making the turn after teeing off at 1:41 p.m. He rallied to finish at even par 72. Day bogeyed 3 and 17 and doubled 11, saying no “amens’’ at Amen Corner but a loud one after finishing his day at only 2-over 74, knowing he was probably lucky to have done that.
“The only real thing you can do is just try and grind and have more birdies than bogeys,’’ Day said. “There’s really nothing that you can do. It’s really about just trying to get the calculation right. Make sure you hit it on the right breeze. In among the trees it starts to swirl a little bit and the hardest thing is to really commit to that and hit the shot.’’
Despite their struggles they were more alive than DJ and just as alive as anyone at day’s end because only one player succeeded in running away from the pack and the hawk that was swirling around the high pines.
For a time it looked like Belgium’s Thomas Pieters might be that guy when he got to 5-under through 10 but as that surly wind picked up so did his score, proving once again you can’t fight Mother Nature. At least not with a golf club in your hand.
Pieters bogeyed 11, doubled the par-3 12th, bogeyed 15 and doubled 18 to finish at even par, 7 strokes off the pace set by leader Charley Hoffman, who somehow got around at 7-under 65 despite starting his afternoon round just as the wind really picked up. Despite that, Hoffman birdied eight of the final 14 holes, including four of the last five.
Yet even the way things ended for Hoffman, Pieters felt lucky just to survive.
“If you catch the wrong gust at the wrong time then you look stupid, like I did on 12,’’ Pieters said. “It’s actually a short hole so you’re trying to make birdie. It’s only an 8-iron but then you can’t do anything about wind gusts. That’s just Augusta, I guess.’’
Those winds not only affected the ball in the air, it also affected it on the ground. Justin Rose found that particularly problematic over the first 12 holes. Although he would finish 1-under 71, Rose believed had the wind not been blowing a gale more of his putts, of all things, would have fallen.
“The first 12 holes I didn’t miss a shot tee to green but just making putts I found incredibly difficult,’’ Rose said. “When the greens are this fast, the wind has a significant effect on them. The third hole, for example, I had a putt that was just left-to-right, across the slope and a gust of wind hit it mid-putt and then it caught like a little down slope 4 foot past the hole and then went 10 feet by.
“Little things like that, they can unnerve you early in your round. I managed to get the putting going a little bit, but everything was a challenge today.’’
For everyone but Charley Hoffman the challenge was not really about trying to go low. It was about not going high.
Or, in Dustin Johnson’s case, not going down for the count.