ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – It was all right there for the taking. The course was playing easy, the field was arrayed behind him, every stick in the bag was working the way it should have. Still, Dustin Johnson couldn’t get it done. Once again, a major Sunday has arrived with Dustin Johnson in control, and once again, the sun has set with Johnson spiraling down the leaderboard.
Granted, this major Sunday wasn’t like most: thanks to wind delays, this was only the third round of the British Open, not the fourth. But still, the pattern holds: Johnson simply cannot stand prosperity. Consider the list: the 2010 U.S. Open, where he had a three-shot lead heading into the final day; the 2010 PGA Championship, where he stood on the 18th tee with a one-stroke lead; the 2011 British Open, where he played in the final pairing alongside Darren Clarke; and the 2015 U.S. Open, where he had a 12-foot putt to win or force a playoff, and three-putted. Chances to win, chances to fight for a playoff, fumbled away, time after time.
Johnson has immense talent; you don’t bring two courses as wildly different as St. Andrews and Chambers Bay to their knees within weeks of each other without having one of the best games in the world. What Johnson doesn’t yet have is that indefinable ability that Jordan Spieth does: the ability to slam shut on mistakes while pushing forward on advantages. Spieth made one bogey on Sunday and followed that up with three straight birdies. Johnson made his first bogey and followed that with seven straight pars, then made another and followed that with two more bogeys to finish the round.
Johnson closed the day with a 75, a round that quite honestly is worse than anything that Tiger Woods did here, mainly because the scoring conditions were ideal. Of the 80 golfers in the field, only 11 finished over par. Johnson, at three-over, was the second-worst player in the field; only Ryan Fox at 4-over took more strokes to get around the gentle Old Course.
“I didn’t feel like I played that bad,” Johnson said after the round. “Just couldn’t hole the putts. I felt like I was hitting good putts. They just weren’t going in the hole.” One could argue that, in most cases, a putt that doesn’t go in the hole isn’t really a good putt, but we’ll leave that there.
Johnson will begin the day at -7, five strokes back of the leaders, and something amazing will have to happen for him to get back into this. “I’m going to have to put together a special round [Monday] to have a chance,” he said. “Get off to a really good start, maybe. You never know what happens. Anything can happen.”
He knows that better than anyone.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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