Dustin Johnson shoots 72, assures low numbers on weekend at Tour Championship

Dustin Johnson stopped short of using the word “guarantee,” but he made a declaration that he’s going to go low on the weekend in the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club.

Johnson shot a 2-over-par 72 in Friday’s second round to fall into a tie for 12th at 1-over 141, and believes he’s hitting the ball too well, especially off the tee, to play over par on the weekend.

“I’m going to put up a good number for the rest of the weekend,” Johnson said. “I know so.”

Johnson missed only three of 14 fairways off the tee and four of 18 greens in regulation Friday. But when he missed a fairway he paid the price with bogeys on each occasion.

“I thought I played good,” Johnson said. “I drove it in the fairways and hit some good shots, I just didn’t make any putts. It’s pretty simple. I didn’t make any putts.”

Johnson made four second-round bogeys and two birdies, with putts of 24 feet on the par-4 fourth hole and 7 feet on the 200-yard par-3 18th.

He missed birdie putts of 6 and 9 feet as well as three additional birdie putts between 12 and 18 feet, and three-putted from 50 feet on the par-4 17th, missing an 8-foot comebacker.

Despite his 2-over 72, Johnson dropped just one place on the leaderboard from a tie for 11th at 1-under 69. He is 10 shots behind leader Henrik Stenson and seven behind Jordan Spieth in second.

Johnson hit some loose iron shots, and some were impacted by course conditions.

PGA Tour officials decided to play the ball down after 1.65 inches of rain fell on the course overnight, and Johnson had the misfortune of having to hit some approach shots from a fairway with mud on his ball.

“It’s tough to get it close to these flags,” Johnson said. “Even out of the fairway I had mud balls so you can’t control what the ball is going to do. A few times when I could be aggressive it seemed like my ball was covered in mud, then I’m just trying to get it on the green and I’m happy. That happened at least three times. That’s just how it goes.”

Johnson’s three missed fairways came on the par-4 first, 10th and 16th holes.

“I only missed a couple fairways, and when I missed the fairway I had a [terrible] lie in the worst spot you could be in,” Johnson said. “But other than that I felt like I swung it good, I drove it well, hit some good shots, hit a lot of greens, just didn’t make any putts.”

On the first hole, Johnson missed the fairway to the left, hit a tree branch on his attempted shot toward the green that deflected his ball into the right rough, and later chipped to 2 feet to save bogey.

On the 10th, Johnson pulled his drive nearly against a fence that runs along an adjacent road and was forced to take a drop and penalty stroke for an unplayable lie once it was deemed his ball was still inbounds. A rules official employed a rope from one out-of-bounds stake to the next to ensure the ball was still in play. Johnson then hit a good shot near the green and got up and down to save a bogey.

“It was very close to being out,” Johnson said. “I made a good 5 there.”

On the 16th hole, his ball was in inch into the primary rough but was barely visible. He chunked it out short of the green, then hit a chunky chip on the wet turf to the fringe and two-putted from there for bogey.

Johnson has needed 31 putts in each of the first two rounds.

“I feel really good about every part of the game, I’m even hitting putts that I feel like are good they’re just not going in the [darn] hole,” he said.

Johnson will all but guarantee that some more will be going in this weekend.

Because NBC wants to air both the Tour Championship and Notre Dame football Saturday, tee times run from 9:20-11:30 a.m. and television coverage is from 10 a.m. to noon on Golf Channel and noon to 3:30 p.m. on NBC.

Johnson tees off at 10:30 a.m. with Bubba Watson.

This story was originally published September 25, 2015 at 7:55 PM with the headline "Dustin Johnson shoots 72, assures low numbers on weekend at Tour Championship."