Johnson conquers some demons
Showing no signs of being haunted by ghosts of 2010
Dustin Johnson speaks, and his words disappear like invisible ink from once-hopeful notebooks.
If the big, loose-jointed 31-year-old South Carolinian were to step to the microphone and tell reporters, as long-ago Toronto Maple Leafs coach Floyd Smith did, “I have nothing to say and I’m only going to say it once,” his audience would acknowledge the truth in his statement and walk away in search of something useful to put between quote marks.
Fortunately for him, there is no two-stroke penalty for vapidity. The golf ball doesn’t care if he’s inarticulate. It wouldn’ t care if he were mute.
All he needs to do is keep playing great golf for three more days, keep striping tee shots miles down the lush fairways of Whistling Straits, keep holing putts and not trip on his sword on Sunday, and there is no reason he can’t win this PGA Championship, his first major, after more than a few hiccups, a couple of them recent.
On that day, no doubt he will say: “Well, I played pretty nicely.”
And no one will argue with him.
Thursday’s first-round performance, a 6-under-par 66, in the company of RBC Canadian Open champ Jason Day and Players Championship winner Rickie Fowler — surely this week’s greatest threesome never to win a major — was, in a word, overpowering.
Let Day, the affable Aussie who’s no slouch himself off the tee, tell it.
“He had a couple of putts coming home to get to 7 (under), possibly 8. I mean, he’s driving it longer than everyone else and driving it very straight. He’s putting himself in positions where 95, 99 per cent of the players this week aren’t there.” Day himself shot a 68 to join in a seven-man cluster at 4-under, two behind Johnson.
“Like especially (489-yard) No. 4, hitting it way down over the hill into the wind — that’s just freakish to be able to do that. And come in with a sand wedge, it’s really a joke.”
Not the sort of joke everyone else was laughing at, though.
The early groups, and Johnson was in one of them, had the best of the weather, not the freshening winds that blew many an afternoon starter off-course; among them, the marquee trio of Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Zach Johnson.
It didn’t seem to bother Sweden’s David Lingmerth, who had tied Johnson at 6-under with four holes left but three-putted the short par-four 6th for bogey and finished at 67.
“It was pretty tough out there this afternoon, but I’m pretty proud of how I fought through that windy day,” said Lingmerth, who won the Memorial at Muirfield Village earlier this year.
This place probably owes Johnson one, mind you. The man his peers call D.J. famously had his 2010 challenge for the PGA title here kneecapped on the 72nd hole by a much trampled-upon bunker that he thought was just another scruffy patch of rough, incurring a two-stroke penalty for grounding his club.
Thursday, he showed no signs of being haunted by it.
Starting on the 10th tee, with his coach Butch Harmon cautioning him to play for position and hit 2-iron on the short par-4, Johnson said: “No, I’m gonna send it all day.”
He birdied his first two holes and eagled the 573-yard, par-5 16th. He birdied three of the first four on the front nine. He was rolling.
“Today was pretty easy, I would have to say. But I was swinging well, and I was hitting the shots where I was looking. Any time you’re doing that, it makes things a lot easier on you,” he said.
The post-round interview? This was the best of it.
The leader was asked about contending in three major championships in a row.
“I think I’m just playing a little better this year,” he said. “Don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine.”
What’s different about playing from the lead in the major, as opposed to chasing?
“Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t really bother me either way. I would prefer to be in the lead, though, there’s less shots you’ve got to make up.” Like, none. Other than Day and Justin Rose, who is three shots back, most of the pre-tournament favourites struggled to stay around even par.
Martin Kaymer, the winner here five years ago, doublebogeyed his final hole, the tricky ninth, to turn a 68 into a 70, and Japanese phenom Hideki Matsuyama bogeyed three of his last four after being a single shot off Johnson’s pace.
J.B. Holmes had it to 6-under before two l at e bogeys, and Thomas Bjorn, Danny Lee and Harris English all were 5-under before giving shots back late.
In the No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup of McIlroy and Spieth, each finished with a one-under-par 71, McIlroy bogeying the 18th to fall back into the tie.