AUGUSTA — If only all of us could handle 2020 like Dustin Johnson has.
Tumult, meet your Teflon in the newly minted Masters champion. No difficulties seem to stick to Johnson. Only a month ago, he was holed up in a Las Vegas hotel room, just him and his coronavirus, after testing positive at the C.J. Cup tournament there. He served an 11-day quarantine and lost so much valuable prep time for a certain big tournament coming up in Georgia.
This troubled him so much that all he did Sunday was go lower than anyone ever has at the Masters, winning his first green jacket by five strokes and putting to rout the slander that he tends to get all wobbly with partial major championship leads.
This quirk of a November Masters got itself the most authentic kind of champion, the No. 1-ranked player in the world who played as if there really should be some number better than that. Beginning the round with a four-shot lead, Johnson put up a nerveless 68 Sunday to do nothing to that cushion but add more eiderdown to it.
Consider the great breadth of this victory.
Johnson’s 20-under 268 shattered by two strokes the Masters 72-hole scoring record (the 270 by Tiger Woods in 1997 and Jordan Spieth in 2015).
Johnson’s five-shot win was the largest Masters margin of victory since the 12-stroke tour de force by Woods in 1997.
Runner-up Cameron Smith of Australia became the first player ever to record four rounds in the 60s at the Masters. That could not get him even within hailing distance of Johnson, as he finished tied for second with Korea’s Sungjae Im at 15 under.
Name any great who ever won here. And none of them had as few bogeys over a Masters week as did Johnson this week — four.
The golfing genius we always knew was there. While nothing seems certain anymore, Johnson winning on the PGA Tour is — he’s won at least once the past dozen years. He already had one major in the bank, the 2016 U.S. Open. What was revealed Sunday was the underground spring of emotion living beneath that blank stare he trains on his next shot.
Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com
Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com
Johnson may not have done the Mickelson hop or the Woods two-fisted roar when he finished off his round Sunday. What followed was much more touching celebration than that, as he quietly teared up in tandem with his brother Austin, the man on the bag. Later, during a brief interview just outside the clubhouse, Johnson could get nothing out because of the emotion strangling him.
How could the kid who grew up just an hour away in Columbia, S.C., raised on the myth of this place, not be overwhelmed once he merged with its lore? This is the Masters, and it can melt stone.
The new side Johnson showed Sunday was such a welcome sight. “Yeah, growing up, that was all it was, as a kid, you dream of playing in the Masters, and dream about putting on a green jacket. Still kind of think it’s a dream but hopefully it’s not,” he said.
For about a nanosecond Sunday, Johnson’s lead was whittled to one stroke. Following consecutive bogeys on Nos. 4 and 5, he looked up and saw playing partner Im just one back.
Oh, yeah, that really shook him. With his next shot, Johnson hit an 8-iron to seven feet on the par-3 6th, deposited the birdie and went on his merry way.
No one would get as close again, and while he was sculpting a neat little 3-under 33 on the back, Johnson had the benefit of playing his last four holes with a five-shot lead. He turned what is quite a hilly walk into a completely downhill stroll.
All else became footnote this day, no matter the names attached.
Tiger Woods put three in the water on No. 12 and took a 10, his highest score ever on a par-3. The rally he staged from there was near epic — five birdies of his closing six holes — in order to shot 76 and just avoid making his 90th Masters round his highest one ever.
Rory McIlroy proved the adage that you can’t win a tournament on Thursday, but you certainly can lose it. He was 14 under his last three rounds here (Johnson was 12 under), including a Sunday 69, but there was no overcoming his opening-round 75.
As for the Nos. 2- and 3-ranked players who were tied with Johnson after the second round, all they mastered was the power of invisibility. Jon Rahm (72-71 on the weekend) was 10 shots back of Johnson. Justin Thomas (71-70) finished eight back.
With his main competition Sunday named Smith and Im, Johnson was a greyhound being chased by some determined, yet out-sized young pugs.
Dustin dusted 'em all.
And in the process, he demonstrated a very needed quality these days: Determination in the face of doubt.
Much was made of the fact that he was 0-fer the last four times he held a 54-hole lead in a major. Don’t think Johnson didn’t hear that.
“I proved that I can get it done on Sunday with the lead at a major, especially in tough conditions,” he said. “I felt like it was tricky out there today. I proved to myself that I do have it. There were doubts in my mind, just because I had been there. I’m in this position a lot of times. Like when am I going to have the lead and finish off the golf tournament or finish off a major? For me, it definitely proved that I can do it.”
Asked if he thought he missed out on anything Sunday not having a great throng of fans serenade him as has every champion before him, he just smiled and quickly answered, “Nope.”
Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com
Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com
Asked if that bout with coronavirus so near this Masters — in which he suffered mild and short-lived symptoms — ever made him feel unprepared to compete this week, he never blinked.
“I knew there was no chance of me missing the Masters, so that kind of gave me a little bit more of a drive to practice,” he said. “Granted, you sit in the hotel room for two weeks, it doesn’t do a lot for the golf game. But I put a lot of work in last week at Houston, and here this week.”
Proof that if you can roll with anything you can still achieve much — consider that this win paired with his FedEx Cup victory at East Lake in September, Johnson’s banked more than $17 million just in Georgia these last three months.
There’s an operating philosophy somewhere here we can borrow for the rest of this trying 2020.
Maybe one as simple as: Keep calm and D.J. on.
About the Author
