JOY & RAIN FOR DUSTIN
Johnson leads by 1 as downpour, darkness halt second round at British Open
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The Old Course is taking an old-fashioned butt-kicking from a man on a mission.
Dustin Johnson is looking very much like someone angrily determined to slay his demons once and for all. He has been cutting the venerable layout down to size with his driver, gripping and ripping it with a vengeance so that from the second shot on, he is playing a pitch-and-putt course.
It was a bit of a bizarre finish to the day on Friday as the R&A, with darkness overtaking the course, endeavored to get Tom Watson over the Swilken Bridge in his last Open. But with the option theirs, Johnson, as well as the Grand Slam-seeking Jordan Spieth, played to just short of the par-5 14th green before marking their balls to suspend their round. Play was called with 42 golfers still on the course, thanks to a three-hourplus rain delay in the morning.
Johnson, at 10-under par, 3-under for the day, will have five holes to complete in his second round, perhaps in torrential rain, after going to bed with a one-shot edge on clubhouse leader Danny Willett. Spieth, with three birdies and three bogeys, ended the day behind by five, tied for 15th. Johnson finally made his first bogey of the tournament with the wind howling on the par3 11th hole.
Right now, however, it doesn’t appear as if Johnson intends to let this one slip away, no matter what conditions he faces. “Yeah, I feel great. I’m in a good spot,” he said. “Definitely got very tricky this afternoon, all day. Even the front side the wind was howling and it was blowing straight left to right pretty much. It played very tough all day.”
Willett, a 27-year-old from Yorkshire, is trying to become the first Englishman to win the Open since Nick Faldo in 1992 but he, like the rest of the field, won’t find it easy to pick up ground on Johnson.
One person who won’t have that chance is Tiger Woods. He was 2-over for the day and 5-over for the week when darkness halted play, and will be forced to come back at 7 a.m. for the ignominy of missing the cut, at even par. It would be first time he has missed the cut in back-to-back majors. And with those rains forecast for the morning, it will be even less fun.
Willett had never been higher than T-11 after any round in a major. Once the topranked amateur in the world, he is a twotime European Tour winner who made it to the semifinals of this year’s Cadillac Match Play Championship before losing to Gary Woodland.
But winning the claret jug, perhaps the most cherished sports prize in Willett’s homeland, will take patience and nerve, and he is known as a fidgety sort.
“I think it’s a childhood dream, and looking up there it’s still a little bit surreal but something I’m going to have to get used to, otherwise no point in being up there,” he said. “We’re going to try and rest up and then try and go out for another good weekend and hopefully we can be up there in two days’ time.”
Willett was part of the morning wave that got the better of the weather. Those players got a break when play was suspended and they didn’t have to compete in driving rain that turned the Valley of Sin into the Sea of Sin. Willett, who was up at 5 a.m. exercising, popped back into his room at the Old Course Hotel and took a nap for an hour before going out in far more favorable conditions. The rest of the day had everything: sunshine, rain and, as the last players were left — many wearing stocking caps — plenty of Scottish wind.
“I said yesterday, it could be Armageddon today, and it was this morning,” Willett said. “Luckily we didn’t have to play in the rain. Then again, you don’t know around this place, it could blow through. You wake up in the morning, it could be fine. It could be pumping. You’re not really quite sure.” We can be sure of one thing. This isn’t Chambers Bay, and it may not be for Dustin Johnson.