WELCOME BACK!
Augusta National. April. Golf’s best. Azaleas. Patrons. Spring. They’re all back. So is Dustin Johnson as he attempts to defend a title that was as much self-validation as it was triumph over four strange days in November.
When he won the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont, when he finally ended some monumental disappointments in major championships, Dustin Johnson decided it was time for a career adjustment.
After winning his first major title with a three-shot victory that included a potentially unsettling penalty assessment, Johnson wanted more. And now that he had one, he wanted to back it up it with another.
“I’ve contended in a bunch of majors, and I’ve had chances to win a lot of them,” Johnson said. “Obviously the hardest one is to get the first, but even getting the second one, it’s just as hard. I mean, it doesn’t get any easier.”
Johnson, though, has made it look easy. At least,
he certainly did in November when he validated what he did at Oakmont with another dominating performance at the Augusta National Golf Club, setting nine records while winning the Masters with a record 72-hole score.
Johnson returns there this week, trying to become only the fourth player to repeat as Masters champion and getting to do so in completely different playing conditions in completely different circumstances. Among the most prominent: Fans — patrons, as they refer to them there — will be allowed back on the grounds, albeit it in reduced capacity. Five months ago, COVID-19 protocols prevented patrons from attending, turning one of the greatest theaters in golf into an eerily quiet mausoleum.
“I think it will be back to feeling like a normal Masters,” Johnson said recently in a conference call. “There was nothing normal about last year, for the whole year, really. Yeah, I think this year, the Masters will feel like it’s back, and it will feel the same. I’m definitely looking forward to that.”
It had been a steady progression to donning the green jacket for Johnson. In his previous four starts at Augusta National, he had finished sixth, fourth, 10th and second (to Tiger Woods) in 2019. Johnson finally capped the journey in 2020 when he established a 72hole scoring record at 20-under 268 while making only four bogeys in four days — fewest ever by a Masters champion.
What’s more, Johnson led the field in greens in regulation, hitting 60 of 72 greens (83.3%), tying the tournament’s best mark since 1980. On the 12 greens he missed, he scrambled to save par nine times, tying for fourth in the field. He averaged 306.7 yards off the tee (sixth) and hit 78.6 percent of the fairways (13th).
“I felt like I was in complete control of the golf ball pretty much the whole week,” Johnson said.
The field of 88 players will see a different golf course this week than the one they saw in November, when rainy conditions, coupled with a fall overseed, made Augusta National play softer and slower. That partly explains how Johnson became the first player in Masters history to post two 65s in one tournament.
That will not be the case when the tournament begins Thursday.
“Well, in November, the greens were soft, so you could be a lot more aggressive with longer clubs because they would stop and then hold the green,” Johnson said. “One of the guys I was playing with hit a 3wood to like the back left pin on 15, you know, and it landed right next to the hole and stopped to like a couple feet. So that’s just a shot that in April, unless we just get tons of rain, is not possible.”
Johnson comes to the Masters as the No. 1 player in the world, but not riding the same wave he did last fall when he finished second at the PGA Championship, then won two of three playoff events (he finished a playoff second in the other) to capture the FedEx Cup. He has played in just four stroke-play events since his Masters victory, with a best finish of tied for eighth at the Genesis Invitational.
No matter. Just having a green jacket, getting a permanent spot in the champions locker room, is enough to energize any player. Johnson said he already felt it when he returned to Augusta National the second week of March for the first time since his victory there.
“I went up for a couple days; that was pretty cool, first time back, going into the champions locker room and stuff,” Johnson said. “That was a really neat experience. First time I spent the night on the grounds, so that was another cool firsttime experience. And had dinner in my green jacket. That was a lot of fun.
“I mean, it definitely is something that gives me more confidence, which is good. You need confidence when you’re playing golf. It definitely reassures me and to myself that I am a very good player, and that, you know, I can win these big golf tournaments.”
It is surprising to some people that it took Johnson so long to win the Masters. With his length and the height and descent of his irons, his game is tailored to Augusta National as much as any player not named Tiger Woods. Yet, in his first five trips to the Masters, he missed the cut once and finished 30th or worse three other times. His best finish in that stretch was a tie for 13th in 2013 when he opened with a 67.
That has all changed in his past five visits when his worst finish was a tie for 10th in 2018 after an opening 73.
“I think just getting to know the course better, getting used to kind of the atmosphere there,” Johnson said. “Obviously, the atmosphere [in 2020] was way different than it normally is. Normal Masters is you play in front of a lot of people, so it has a different kind of vibe to it. It’s an incredible one.
“I feel like my first [time], I really liked the golf course, and I felt like I was playing it pretty well. I just wasn’t scoring that well on it and just making too many mistakes. But it wasn’t the golf course. I felt like I knew the golf course pretty well, but I guess I didn’t know it as well as I thought I did. The more and more I play the golf course, the more I learn about it and the more comfortable I am on it.”
Johnson has finished in the top 10 in seven of the past 11 major championships, including second or better in four of the previous seven. He has six World Golf Championship titles — second only to Woods — and is only the third player in history to win at least one event in his first 13 seasons on the PGA Tour. Woods and Jack Nicklaus are the others.
Much will be expected of him again this week, which is fine with Johnson. He has a green jacket to go with his U.S. Open victory at Oakmont.
“Now that I’ve got two majors, yeah, I mean, the goal is to definitely get more,” Johnson said. “For me, it’s just I want to put myself in that position to have a chance to win come that back nine on Sunday at Augusta.”