Sounds of silence greet Johnson, Todd
CROMWELL — You could hear it. Well, actually, you couldn’t hear it.
As Dustin Johnson walked up the 18th fairway shortly before 12:30 early Saturday afternoon, he was met by the giant natural bowl of grass and the seven trees to the right of one of the loudest finishing holes in golf.
When Jordan Spieth holed out from the bunker in front of those trees to win the 2017 Travelers Championship in a playoff, the Texan said he had felt the earth beneath his feet shake with noise. That’s how loud it was.
Not on this day, not in this year, not on this earth.
Johnson would find his ball sitting 9 feet, 5 inches from the cup. He would see his chance at a 10-underpar 60. He would hear nothing. There were 30 people in the vicinity, half of them media, half of them tournament volunteers and officials. None of them moving. None making a sound.
On another Travelers weekend, there would have been great roars and great cheers. And that would have been for Johnson’s fiancée Paulina Gretzky. Paulina’s dad used to tear up the XL Center 12 miles up the road in his WHA and NHL days. Now it was Johnson who was tearing up TPC River Highlands with a round of pinpoint accuracy that would demand only two putts longer than 9 feet among his nine birdies. Yeah, the gallery in another year would have roared for Dustin, too.
Just not on this day, not in this
year. COVID-19 calls the shots now.
There were a few birds chirping. And as a thin mist turned to raindrops there was a whisper of them bouncing off the cart path. All we needed was Chris Berman, the great booster of the state’s premier sports event, to lean in and murmur, “Per Mr. Simon and Mr. Garfunkel, the ‘Sounds of Silence.’ ”
DJ missed his 10th birdie. No oohs. No aahs. No groans. No fans were at 18. He sank the 19-inch par putt to complete his career-best round of minus-9 61 and settle into second place two strokes behind leader Brendon Todd (-18) heading into Sunday’s final round.
Threesomes headed out early Saturday, from 7 to 9:15 a.m. to beat the bad weather closing in from the west. The sky was overcast, the air was dense, the grass untrampled. Some much-wanted, muchneeded noise could be found along the eighth and ninth holes from the folks who live on the course. A little festivity, some hollers, a dollop of encouragement — this would suffice instead of the nearly 100,000 folks who might have been here Saturday with such a hyped field of golfers.
“I got a few claps out there from the houses,” Johnson said. “There’s some people watching. I mean, it’s different. I enjoy playing in front of the fans, especially on the weekends if you’re in the hunt. They just bring a lot more excitement.”
It struck me that maybe they should start from the 10th tee Sunday and finish at the ninth hole. For there is no Fill The Hill in 2020. Only a natural amphitheater ghost town.
Yet here we were again at the 18th, this time with Todd walking up to the 18th green at 1:20 p.m. with his playing partners, Kevin Streelman and former Travelers champion Marc Leishman. Suddenly there was a yell from a distant home. It was for Rory McIlroy, who had just teed off at the 18th.
Like DJ, Todd, too, would miss a birdie putt on 18th, his from 7 feet, 7 inches, and his par would give him a careerbest 61. The difference is his three-round, minus-18 score of 192 is a Travelers record.
Todd has hit a remarkable 41 of 42 fairways through three rounds. He missed one Thursday. That’s 98 percent accuracy. Then again, when you are 222nd in driving yardage on the PGA Tour, you better be accurate.
Numbers can be funny in golf.
Johnson, who didn’t play between the Tour Championship in August and the Presidents Cup in December after a knee scope, is No. 6 in the World Golf Ranking. When he is on his game, no one in the world is any better.
Todd is No. 6 in the FedExCup standings. When he is on his game, well, his 58th standing in the World Golf Ranking about fits.
The WGR is calculated on individual performances in about 400 tournaments in 23 tours over a rolling two-year period. The FedEx is calculated for PGA Tour events, with the winner getting from 250 to 600 points depending on the quality of the field and ending with a playoff and a $15 million bonus and fiveyear Tour exemption for the champion.
As he headed to bed Saturday, Todd was projected to take over the No. 1 spot from Webb Simpson in the FedExCup standings.
Think about that for a moment.
It’s because of Todd’s victories at the Bermuda Championship and Mayakoba Golf Classic from late last autumn (part of the 2020 season). He could become the first on Tour to win three tournaments, and already has made $2.5 million of his career $9.2 million this season. He also has twice seen his career go in the tank with a case of the yips and had sunk as low as 2,043 in the World Ranking in 2018. He and Johnson, who has 20 Tour victories, have had very different career paths.
“It seems like since the fall, whenever I get a two- or three-week stretch in a row, I tend to be playing better by the end of it,” Todd said. “That’s just something I’m using to my advantage now after missing two cuts (at the Charles Schwab and RBC Heritage). I’m peaking in the third week and hopefully I can get it done tomorrow.”
There was so much ballyhoo about nine of the top 10 golfers in the WGR coming to Cromwell this week. Yet as we enter the final round — look — Johnson is the only one among the top 10 on the Travelers leaderboard.
No. 1 Rory McIlroy and No. 2 Jon Rahm are tied for 18th at minus-10, eight shots behind Todd. No. 3 Justin Thomas missed the cut. No. 4 Brooks Koepka and No. 5 Simpson withdrew because of COVID-19 concerns. No. 7 Patrick Reed is tied for 49th at minus-5, No. 9 Patrick Cantlay is tied for 27th at minus-8 and No. 10 Xander Schauffele is tied for 22nd at minus-9.
Phil Mickelson, who stole the show Friday with his 63 and his cool sunglasses, looked more like his 50 years Saturday. The shades came off with the drizzle. He shot a 71, now six strokes off the lead in seventh.
“I was a little off,” Lefty said, “but I’m having fun.”
Granted, the soft greens will lead to low scores. Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau (11th in the world, five strokes off the lead), any numbers guys could charge up the leaderboard. Such is the Travelers Championship. Then again, Todd or Johnson could break the Travelers record in Cromwell of a minus-22 258 by 2009 champion Ken Perry. Heck, the 25under by Tim Norris at Wethersfield in 1982 isn’t out of the question.
“I’m very happy with the way I played,” Johnson said. “Every hole, I felt like I was giving myself an opportunity to make birdie.
“I felt like I had a lot of control of my distance and the shot shapes. That was the biggest key. But probably the most important part of the round was No. 11, where I made that really good bunker save. I put myself in an awful spot with a wedge.”
Johnson, who has young sons Tatum and River with Gretzky, turned 36 on Monday. He said he stayed in Hilton Head after the RBC, went fishing with the boys.
“Just hung around the house and then flew up here,” Johnson said.
Low-key. DJ is almost always low-key.
“He’s easy to play with, nice guy, doesn’t show too much emotion out there,” Todd said. “So I think we’re going to have a really good time and probably a really good battle. Dustin’s starting to play really well (in his seventh event of 2020). We’re both kind of peaking this week at the same time, so hopefully we can both go low.”
They’ll need to go low. Like tournament-record low.
And then they will be greeted with a big check, no Paulina and the mighty sounds of silence. The good news is it will be on television.