Dustin Johnson’s long-awaited Green Jacket – 40 inch chest, tall fit, arm length extra-long – came with just about zero drama. It’s probably just as well, but it was his own doing.
DJ may have “the greatest temperament in golf” as we kept hearing time and again, but he’s lost all four times he had the 54-hole in the final round of a major, the most recent coming in August at the PGA. He’d handed a number of other potential winning situations away almost flagrantly as well.
For all his many millions of dollars won, FedEx Cup and otherwise, for all that he’s won a tour event in umpteen years in a row in a record of consistency no-one in the modern game can match, for all that he is the World No 1, Johnson’s career thus far clearly under-represents his talent, even with a green jacket on his shoulders.
Up until recently, his career record of number of PGA Tour wins and a sole major – the 2016 US Open at Oakmont – was a perfect match for Davis Love III. Love was a fair player, of course, but Johnson has vastly more talent.
His often languid appearance and attitude – and one of two brushes with Tour authority – either suggested he wasn’t quite all there or didn’t much care. Johnson’s press interviews are rarely illuminating or even interesting – they’re pretty much full of platitudes and the dullness of his delivery doesn’t help.
This week, however, that languid attitude suggested he was in the zone. But for a brief blip in the second round and an event briefer one yesterday on the front nine, it was a seamless progression to the win, and he rarely looked in trouble, self-correcting a recurring pull on the opening holes just in time for the tricky stretch around the turn and down to Amen Corner.
Once through that nest of potential vipers, with no-one able to surge from the back, his playing partners Sungjae Im and Abraham Ancer failing to threaten, it was left to Australia’s Cam Smith to put pressure on.
A couple of outrageous up and downs helped, but the 27-year-old had to be content with the best-ever score to finish second at Augusta.
Johnson’s 20-under is a new record aggregate – and somewhat fittingly amounted to Bryson DeChambeau’s “personal par” for four rounds at Augusta. The hype was right, it was just targeted at the wrong guy this week.
Tiger’s ten largely underlines what we thought about him
The Commandments. Downing Street. Bo Derek. Diego Maradona. Great tens of history, all.
Tiger Woods’ 10 at the 12th at Augusta yesterday is notable but is not remotely in the canon, and there was a sweet irony in it at the very least.
Golden Bell, the 160 yard par three with capricious winds, had been where Woods had played the percentage shot 40 feet left of the pin after watching Francesco Molinari and Tony Finau go into the water last year, and in the knowledge that Brooks Koepka had done the same in the group before.
It was where the door swung wide open to his 15th major title, a two-putt par ending with him in the lead. Not for Tiger any Jordan Spieth-like collapses on Augusta’s most picturesque hole.
Yesterday, unlike Spieth’s two visits to Rae’s Creek during his 2016 collapse – and to be fair, he was leading the Masters at the time – Woods found the water three times.
Tiger’s tee shot hit the edge of the bank at the front of the green and rolled back into the creek, and his re-load from the penalty drop area spun back into the water as well.
With his fifth shot, Tiger was long and into the bunker at the back of the green, but his fragile back came into play with an awkward stance and he knifed it over the green and into the water a third time.
He played his eighth shot out of the bunker again, finally finding the putting surface and two-putted for his first double figure return in his pro career.
Always grinding, Woods got five of the seven shots lost back in the final six holes, and ended on one-under for the tournament. It’s hard to imagine another player responding to the embarrassment of a 10 in such a fashion.
But the feeling about Tiger coming into the event was largely confirmed. His 68 on the first day promised much, but he wasn’t to swing so freely and look so comfortable again.
The back is an ongoing issue still, and it seems unlikely he can sustain a challenge over four rounds at a major championship at present, if ever again.
He always has a chance at Augusta where he knows the course and conditions so well. But the course is not so familiar that it won’t bite him back on occasion, as yesterday proved.
