The report came late afternoon Wednesday, very likely shaking up the Masters leaderboard before even the first number was posted.
Pre-tournament favorite Dustin Johnson injured his back in a fall and was at best hopeful to make his 2:03 p.m. tee time in Thursday’s first round.
Nothing else has slowed the world’s No. 1-ranked player and winner his past three times out on the PGA Tour. But now a trip and fall on a rainy day in Augusta, away from the course, may do what the best golfers in the world have been largely unable to this season. Deny Johnson.
Johnson’s agent, David Winkle, supplied what detail was available.
“At roughly 3:00 pm (Wednesday), Dustin took a serious fall on a staircase in his Augusta rental home,” his statement read.
“He landed very hard on his lower back and is now resting, although quite uncomfortably. He has been advised to remain immobile and begin a regimen of anti-inflammatory medication and icing, with the hope of being able to play tomorrow.”
Johnson entered this week the favorite of oddsmakers and well-placed observers alike.
“If there’s a course built for someone — we said that about Tiger Woods — it’s (Augusta National and) Dustin Johnson right now,” said World Golf Hall of Famer and Golf Channel analyst Colin Montgomerie. “Obviously he’s the guy to beat, if he can cope with the additional pressure that’s on his shoulders.”
The star quality of the Masters field already had taken a bit of a hit when Woods announced he would miss his third Masters in four years with a back injury. But now it was Johnson who was the long hitting sensation poised to dissect Augusta National and lap the field. This was his eighth Masters, and he seemed to be getting the hang of it — coming off his best finish a year ago (fourth).
“I’ve always liked the course. I always thought it suited my game very well,” Johnson said Tuesday.
“The last couple years I’ve done a little bit better, and I feel like I’ve had a chance. Obviously I’m playing well coming into this week, so hopefully I can continue that success, and I’m looking forward to giving myself a chance to win on Sunday.”
Here was “the best driver of the golf ball of all time, other than Tiger Woods in 2000,” ESPN’s resident champion/analyst, Curtis Strange said. But such a skill requires a very limber back.
It is not the first time Johnson has been knocked for a loop at the Masters with a quirky injury. After straining his back lifting a Jet Ski a week before the 2012 tournament, he was forced to withdraw.
No player has come into the Masters as the top-ranked golfer in the world and won since Woods in 2002. When asked about that curious fact, Johnson could only quip, “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve ever been the favorite.” Throw in a fall from the stairs, and that footnote was beginning to look like a curse.
That it was the 32-year-old Johnson who reportedly had a clumsy moment on the stairs was all the more unfathomable because here was perhaps the most athletic player on the PGA Tour. As fellow pro Rickie Fowler put it: “Dustin is just crazy, in a way kind of a freak of nature.”
He is a survivor of multiple calamities and fiery crashes in the majors, but those all happened on the course. That all culminated with the 2016 U.S. Open, in which he was ambushed by a mid-round penalty on Sunday and still won by three strokes. Seemingly no external upheaval could touch him.
To victory and disappointment alike he turned a blank expression. The inevitable anger that golf sparks never showed in Johnson’s face.
“Yeah, I’ve gotten frustrated a few times. Probably when I was younger. I still get mad now, but I just don’t show it as much,” Johnson said earlier this week. “I was taught very young that it’s not the right way to act, and so I just kind of stopped. It doesn’t look very good when you do it.”
This is something different. Not some arcane golf ruling to be shrugged off.
Johnson tried to warn us Tuesday that nothing is certain at the Masters.
“I’ve got a lot of confidence in my game right now, especially with the way I’ve been playing the last few tournaments,” he said.
“But, you know, anything can happen.”
