Imagine how good Dustin Johnson would be if his putter ever gets hot. The world No 1 ranked only 106th in strokes gained in putting in the early season on the PGA Tour and left a number of shots on the greens as he waltzed to a second Saudi International win in the last three years.
In that time he has a combined 44-under-par total at the Royal Greens Golf & Country Club and his worst score has been a 68. And this year he dropped only two shots to par in the 72 holes. ‘I just played solid, but just couldn’t hole any putts. I struggled with the reads. What I saw as left-to-right turned out to be right-to-left and what I saw as right-to-left was left-to-right. But I’m very pleased with winning when I didn’t feel like wasn’t completely firing on all cylinders.’
Johnson talks as though he has just won a Sunday morning walkabout with his mates. Which is what his latest win, in only his second tournament since earning the famed Green Jacket at The Masters last November, seemed to resemble. Briefly, he allowed Tony Finau to draw alongside him at the top of the leaderboard, but then the Texan quickly made birdie at the next hole to stretch away again.
Not to mention he left the likes of Tyrrell Hatton, Viktor Hovland, Justin Rose, Bryson DeChambeau, Tommy Fleetwood, Lee Westwood and a host of other European Tour stars trailing in his wake. Winning was all too easy for the cool Texan, who’d been on a skiing holiday and arrived in the desert region without much practice. It was Johnson’s 16th win in his last 100 starts worldwide. That’s averaging one win in every six tournaments. Tiger Woods averaged one in every five tournaments.
With Johnson you don’t get the animated fist pumps, you don’t get the Pied Piper effect of crowds following him – pre- and-post Covid. He’s got (itals) that (unitals) walk as he goes about his business. He’s long off the tee at around an average 314 yards, but not the longest, ranked just inside the top 10 on the PGA Tour. But tee to green he’s so consistent and such an underrated course manager.
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That’s probably one of his biggest strengths and when it comes to a player’s management of a golf course that’s one area where stats can’t tell the story.
We, surely, have to start talking about him as one of the best to have played the game. And yes, he only has two Majors to his name and ranks with the likes of Retief Goosen and John Daly and behind such players as Padraig Harrington. Even Brooks Koepka has twice the number of Majors than DJ has.
But, look at what else Johnson has achieved. He’s approaching 120 combined weeks as world No 1, with only Woods (683) and Greg Norman (331) ahead of him on that list. He’s earned some $70.8-milion (and counting) in PGA Tour earnings and will soon go past Jim Furyk and Vijay Singh on that list to sit third behind Woods and Phil Mickelson. The doubters will say that with the increases in prize money over the years those stats are meaningless. And they’re right. What it does show, though, is that he heads this current generation of golfers.
The PGA Tour win stats aren’t too kind to him either. Johnson sits at 24 PGA Tour wins, alongside Gary Player. But he’s light years away from the likes of Walter Hagen and Mickelson (45 and 44, respectively), while Woods and Sam Snead are untouchable on 82 wins.
So, the stats will say Johnson is good, even very good, when compared to the greats. I think the stats are misleading. He’s comfortably the best player in the world right now and he’s likely to stay at world No 1 for quite some time yet too. Once he starts draining those putts he might become untouchable.
