NAMES & FACES

When a heckler is called out by the hecklee, often it’s time to put up or shut up. Johnson did that and more in front of a few of the best golfers on the planet and a full-size gallery Thursday during a practice session in the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn.

Johnson, 30, from Mayville, N.D., watched with hundreds of others as Rory McIlroy and Andy Sullivan repeatedly missed a 12-foot putt on the eighth green. Johnson let the European Ryder Cup players hear about it, so Henrik Stenson invited him to come to the putting surface and show the world how it’s done. For good measure, Justin Rose plopped down a $100 bill.

Using Sullivan’s putter, Johnson gave the ball a mighty ride toward the cup.“A little pacey,” he’d say later. “It was the putt I wanted to hit, just not the right speed.” Coasting along on Hazeltine’s Ryder-ready greens, the ball rammed the back of the cup and dropped in. An odd version of the chicken dance by Johnson followed, along with hugs and handshakes from the four pros.

“It was poetry in motion,” Stenson said. “If it doesn’t hit the back of the cup, it’s rolling all the way to fringe.” McIlroy said, “That’s all the way in the water if it misses.”

McIlroy tweeted video of the putt, and murmurs of the feat trickled through the Hazeltine gallery. Johnson said he doesn’t plan to spend the $100 bill (which the pros signed) but instead encase it in “a very expensive frame.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune