Dustin Johnson ready to hit the zenith of a turbulent few weeks at PGA Championship
A win, followed by three rounds with a combined score of 23 over par, followed by four consecutive rounds in the 60s.
That has been Dustin Johnson’s six-week roller coaster ride over his past four events.
A PGA Tour season generally has ebb and flow, but these are heights and depths seldom seen in a short time at the highest level of professional golf, never mind from the No. 5 player in the world.
But as the Coastal Carolina alumnus has shown time and again over his career, he is able to quickly move past the lows, no matter how deep in a crater they may appear to be.
Johnson won his 21st PGA Tour title at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut on June 28 with a 19-under 261 total.
After taking two weeks off, he returned at the Memorial in Ohio and posted a pair of 80s to miss the cut at 16 over, then shot a 78 to begin the 3M Open in Minnesota and withdrew after the first round, citing a stiff back.
“Honestly, neither one, Memorial or Minnesota, bothered me one bit,” Johnson said Wednesday, the eve of the season’s first major, the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. “I was swinging terribly. My back was bothering me just from swinging bad. I didn’t hurt it doing anything. I hurt it swinging just because I was swinging so poorly. So that didn’t really bother me.”
Johnson said the poor results and back issues weren’t the result of attempting to make a swing change. They stemmed from a poor session on the range at Muirfield Village in preparation for the Memorial.
“I was not trying to make any swing changes. I just got into a bad habit,” Johnson said. “I think hitting the range at Muirfield was straight into the wind and I was on an upslope so I was just hanging on my left side real bad and just aggravated my back, that’s all.
“. . . I just went back to the basics, worked on the right things and started hitting the ball well again.”
He rebounded last week, tying for 12th at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis with four rounds between 67 and 69, and believes his game is in better shape this week.
“I felt like I played pretty solid. Still, iron play was just not quite as sharp as I would like it to have been,” Johnson said. “But this week I’ve put in a lot of good work, and I feel like the iron play is definitely back to where it should be, and I’ve got a lot of confidence in the iron game right now.”
Johnson has been one of the most consistent winners in the history of the PGA Tour, having won at least one tournament each year since joining the tour in 2008 following his four-year career at CCU.
He’s just the third player in PGA Tour history to win a title in each of his first 13 seasons, joining Jack Nicklaus (17 seasons) and Tiger Woods (14).
But he has just the 2016 U.S. Open as a major title, so this will be his 14th attempt to add a second major to his resume.
Johnson has contended several times, finishing third at the U.S. Open in 2018, and last year tying for second at the Masters and finishing alone in second and two shots behind now two-time defending champ Brooks Koepka at the PGA Championship last May at Bethpage Black.
“Winning a major is just tough, period,” Johnson said. “You know, as far as the number, I don’t think that really matters how many. Getting that first one I feel like is definitely the hardest. But then, too, after you win the first one, you know you can do it so it definitely makes it easier, but it’s never easy to win a major.”
In his 28 majors prior to his win, Johnson recorded 11 top-10 finishes and was in position to win in the final round several times.
Perhaps the most disheartening finishes were a final-round 82 with a three-shot lead at 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, a missed playoff at the 2010 PGA because he incurred a penalty for grounding his club in a bunker on the final hole at Whistling Straits, and a three-putt from 15 feet on the final hole of the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay to lose by a shot to Jordan Spieth.
“Well, I had a really rough time winning that first one,” Johnson said. “It seemed like it was never going to happen. I was so close so many times.”
TPC Harding Park off Lake Merced has previously hosted an event on the PGA Tour, the 2015 WGC-Match Play Championship that was won by Rory McIlroy. Johnson won his first-round match to tie for 17th in that event.
“I think to play this golf course well, you’ve got to drive it well,” he said. “I think that’s a big key for me. If I can drive it well this week, I feel like I’m going to have a really good week. The course is long. Rough is deep. It’s cold. Ball is not going very far. For me, that’s the game plan.”
He likes the course setup this week, and the weather is expected to be cool, damp and breezy. “I think the course setup is great,” Johnson said. “It’s difficult. It feels like a major championship. You’ve got to drive it in the fairway and hit a lot of greens or you’re going to struggle.”
Johnson has been typically effective off the tee with his prodigious length, ranking 11th on the PGA Tour in shots gained off the tee this year, but he’s outside the top 100 in shots gained in the three categories of approaches to the green, shots around the green and putting.
“Obviously you always need to putt well. I think if I can drive it really well, I’ll have a good chance to win,” he said.
There are a number of things this week that will remind players that they’re in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and a bizarre season, foremost among them is having the season’s first major in August and the grounds being devoid of fans. At last year’s PGA at Bethpage, Johnson became the clear fan favorite as he was attempting to chase Koepka down in the final round.
“I was playing really well and kind of had it going there, especially coming down the stretch,” Johnson recalled. “Yeah, you definitely feed off the crowd. I miss the fans being out here, and hopefully they’ll be back very soon.”
This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 3:49 PM.
