Dustin Johnson had just birdied Nos. 17 and 18 at Pebble Beach Golf Links to nail down a third-round 66 that gave him a three-shot lead going into Sunday at the U.S. Open.Johnson's round squashed all the buzz generated two hours earlier by Tiger Woods, who also shot 66, but now trailed by five strokes.
In a press conference Saturday night, the media was forced to conjure up hypotheticals in hopes of manufacturing intrigue for a final round that appeared to be another Johnson coronation at Pebble Beach.
After all, he had won the two previous AT&Ts, and whatever footnotes had been applied to those titles — rain-shortened last year, messy closing 74 this year — Johnson was about to validate them with a major at Pebble Beach.
But in the interest of storylines, Johnson was asked this bizarre question: "When your game goes off the rails, where does it look ugly, or how does it look?"
The startlingly blunt question unfortunately foreshadowed Johnson's Gil Morgan-esque final round.
Johnson shot an 11-over 82 — the highest closing score by a third-round U.S. Open leader since 1911. (Morgan only shot an 81 in the final round of the wind-ravaged '92 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.)
Johnson hit just eight greens, after finding no fewer than 13 the previous three rounds.
And Johnson had 35 putts, to drop into a tie for 76th in putting for the week.
Johnson's shots buried into tall fescue, hid from gallery-wide manhunts, and tumbled off cliffs.
His nightmare finally ended when he three-putted for par on the 72nd hole, while just trying to get out of the way for Graeme McDowell, who had two putts from 25 feet for the win.
Johnson slid out from the celebration as stealthily as he could after hanging onto a tie for eighth place at 5-over. When ESPN asked Johnson, who came into the final round at 6-under, if he would have trouble sleeping, he replied, "Nah, I'm done with it now. I'm going to get some food and get on my airplane and get home."
Is that still true?
"I know that Dustin feels the same way that I do," said Johnson's caddie Bobby Brown from his home in La Quinta on Tuesday afternoon. "Obviously, Sunday was very hard to go through, but I don't know how to explain it. We're not devastated. We're just disappointed. It's hard to explain the vibe that's going on, on the golf course when things aren't going good. But you just keep your head down and keep moving forward. You try not to show too much emotion. You keep waiting for things to turn around."
While the NBC cameras quickly lost interest in Johnson after he went 7-over the first seven holes, Brown still thought they were in it going into the back nine. Johnson played the treacherous Cliffs of Doom stretch (Nos. 8-10) in even par, and he was still just 1-over for the championship, and three behind McDowell.
"We did walk off No. 10 green, and we kind of looked at each other, and I mentioned to him, 'Dude, things are going down this way. We've got to make a putt on No. 18, and even par is probably going to win this golf tournament.' We were right where we needed to be," said Brown who was a full-time caddie for three years at Pebble Beach. "If you would have backed up and said we started the day and 3- or 4-over and we were in that position to be only two back or three back at that time, it would have been a whole different mind frame."
Johnson entered the final round at 6-under for the championship, and three ahead of McDowell. When asked if they had a target score in mind for the day, Brown replied, "You know what our target score was? 3-iron in the middle of the first fairway."
Johnson made par on the first, and he striped his drive down the fairway on No. 2. Johnson had just a pitching wedge into the 502-yard par 4, but he flared his approach into the fescue above the right greenside bunker.
From there, Johnson hit the shot that will forever depict his disastrous final round in highlight packages, chopping out of the fescue left-handed and moving his ball five feet. The shot got him into play, but then Johnson flubbed his next chip, swinging right under it and catching it off the hosel.
"I was a little bit shocked to see him go at that thing left-handed, because the first thing I thought he was going to do was take an unplayable, or chip it back into the bunker," Brown said. "It all happened so fast. I was about ready to say something, and he kind of told me to get out of the way and said, 'I got this.' At that point, you kind of get out of the way. Maybe next time I won't get out of the way. I'm not sure."
Johnson's third chip rolled up to 5 feet, but he missed the putt, taking a triple-bogey and completely erasing his three-shot lead.
The gaffe was compounded on the next hole, when Johnson roped his tee shot left into trees. While Woods did the same thing just a group ahead and found his tee shot, Johnson couldn't, forcing him to rehit. Less than a minute after the search had been called, Johnson's ball was found, but it was too late.
"The drive on No. 3, for three years we've been doing that," said Brown about their strategy of cutting off the dogleg by blasting over trees on the left. "He just made a bad swing at the wrong time."
Johnson scrambled for a par on his second ball to make a double-bogey and drop to 1-under for the championship. But he then pushed a 3-wood over the cliff on the drivable fourth hole, which he had eagled the day before after hitting the green with a 3-iron. Johnson eventually saved a bogey.
But the hushed crowds throughout the course still gave them hope.
"With what happened to Dustin on Nos. 2-3-4, I was very surprised that Tiger, Phil or Ernie hadn't done anything," Brown said. "I wasn't hearing any other cheers around the golf course. That kind of made me happy."
Johnson entered the back nine 1-over for the championship, but bogeyed Nos. 11 and 12.
But even as late as the 16th hole, Brown believed they still had a shot, sitting at 3-over for the championship and four strokes behind McDowell.
"Even after No. 15, we both looked at each other and were like, 'Hey dude, it's like this: birdie-birdie-birdie, we're probably going to win. Birdie-par-eagle, we're probably going to win,'" Brown said.
If Johnson could have dug down and done that, he would have finished at even par, good enough for an 18-hole playoff Monday morning.
"We missed so many short putts," Brown said. "For as bad as things were happening, if we had made any putts, it would have been a different story."
But nothing worked for Johnson on Sunday. He went on to bogey Nos. 16 and 17, giving him six on the day, or one more than the previous three rounds combined.
Johnson also failed to make a birdie after sinking 11 in the first three days, as well as an eagle.
"I think this is just going to be the best learning experience for both of us," Brown said. "We're going to take so much out of this, and be so much more prepared mentally the next time this happens. I've got a gut feeling that this is just Chapter 1 in the whole Dustin Johnson book. More of them will end better than this one. The support from the crowd for Dustin, you could just feel them, even when all hell was breaking loose."
And Johnson plans to see those crowds back at Pebble Beach next year for the AT&T.
"We're going to get it done again," Brown said. "We're looking forward to the three-peat."
-The Herald
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