NO. 1 IN CONTROL
No. 1-ranked player closes in on first green jacket after bogey-free 65
Top-ranked golfer Dustin Johnson takes four-shot lead.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — There is what Dustin Johnson is producing here — which is brilliant, nearly flawless golf— and what history tells us about its relevance for him in a major championship, which is not much. The Masters will be decided Sunday, and Johnson, the world’s topranked player, is in complete control of both his game and the tournament. Where — and when — have such sentences been written before?
First, the present: Johnson fired a splendid, bogey-free 65 on Saturday to get to 16-under and take a fourshot lead over three golfers from all over the globe— South Korea’s Sungjae Im, Mexico’s Abraham Ancer and Australia’s Cameron Smith. It was the kind of round that would have elicited explosions fromall corners of Augusta National Golf Club — if fans were allowed on site rather than relegated to their couches at home by the coronavirus pandemic.
Johnson, though, would be the one player who might notice neither the gallery’s presence nor its absence. His emotions generally run the gamut from “M” to “N,” his heart rate closer to a tortoise at rest than a rabbit on the run. His message to himself: He has been in this position. He just needs more of what got him here —which is the mundane (30 straight holes without a bogey) and the spectacular (a 5-iron all over the flag at the second hole that set up an eagle).
“I know what it takes,” Johnson said. “I know how I respond in this situation. I’m very comfortable with having the lead going into tomorrow. I’ve been in the situation a lot of times.”
About that: As confident and comfortable as Johnson appears this week, this territory has been trodden on before. Not at Augusta, where Johnson had never led at the end of a round before this week and where his best finish was last year’s tie for second, a shot behind Tiger Woods, who is 11 shots back and will apparently put the green jacket on another player Sunday.
Rather, the only questions about whether Johnson can finish this off arise because of the wounds he has suffered elsewhere. Four times, he has held the lead after the third round of a major championship. Four times, he has failed to close. He has been beaten, such as over the summer at the PGA Championship at Harding Park, where he shot a 68 — only to have Collin Morikawa drop a 64 and beat him by two.
Could someone do that Sunday? The field is dubious. Johnson has matched Jordan Spieth’s record for the lowest 54-hole total at a Masters. He’s going to blow it now?
“He’s got a four-shot lead,” said Smith, a 27-year-old playing his fourth Masters who moved into position with a bogey-free 69.
Still, Johnson knows of similar pressures. A decade ago, he led the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by three shots after three rounds and was playing much as he is now— without peer and without error. He awoke Sunday, made a triple bogey at the second hole, a double at the third — and closed with an 82, his first scar in a major.
Later that same summer of 2010, he looked to have qualified for a playoff in the PGA Championship — only to discover he had grounded his club in a bunker and would be issued a two-shot penalty. Achance to win evaporated into a tie for fifth.
And then, five years ago in the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, Johnson faced a12-foot putt on the 72nd hole. Make it, and hewould beat Spieth by one shot. Two-putt, and force an 18hole playoff.
Johnson three-putted. Spieth won.
Now, it’s the Masters in his hands. And even with all the travails, he also knows what it’s like to close out a major. He did it at the 2016U.S. Open at Oakmont — when he came back from, wouldn’t you know it, a fourshot deficit over the final 18 holes. Had Irishman Shane Lowry played well in that last round, Johnson would still be waiting for his firstmajor victory. But Lowry shot 76, Johnson 69 — and the result flipped.
That’s the only way Johnson isn’t slipping on a green jacket Sunday afternoon.
“If D. J. goes out there and plays really solid like today,” said Ancer, a San Antonio resident who like Smith shot 69 on Saturday, “it’s going to be pretty much impossible to catch him.”
Of course, “pretty much impossible” and “impossible” are wholly different things. Four players have lost a Masters leadof asmanyas four strokes after the first three rounds, the most recent being Rory McIlroy, who shot 80during an infamous collapse in 2011. But McIlroy, who remains among the sport’s elite, was just 21 and playing in only his 10th major. Johnson’s position is vastly different. He is 36, a father of two, playing in his 10th Masters, his 45th major.
“It’s definitely still a long way to go,” he said. “Still got 18 more holes left.”
They are 18 holes at the Masters that will be played in unprecedented conditions. Not only will the field go off two tees and play in threesomes — with Johnson joining Im and Ancer at 9:29 a.m. — but they will do so with almost no fanfare. The pandemic not only pushed this Masters from April to November, but it has limited the crowds to a scant few — reporters, photographers, family of players and Augusta members.
The feel, then, has been more member-guest than Masters. Might that affect the final round?
“Unfortunately, for all of us chasing D. J., there’s no fans or nothing to make that moment even harder, to have that buzz, to have the adrenaline, to have a little bit more pressure put on him,” said Justin Thomas, who stumbled out of the final group with three bogeys in his final five holes to fall to 10 under.
Johnson, by this point, doesn’t much care about the reactions his shots elicit, nor the environment in which he might finally take a green jacket. If he plays like he has all week, that result will take care of itself. If he some how stumbles, the record he would like to leave in the past will only grow.