AUGUSTA -- Launch time Monday at the Masters was 10:30 a.m.
Dustin Johnson stabbed the perfect Augusta National turf with his tee, building his miniature gantry. He set the ball, counted down his own thoughts, and proceeded to wrap his driver around his ears.
Uncoiling with bad intent, Johnson struck the ball with a violence and volume unique even among his peers, very much like Jason Heyward taking BP.
“Oooooh. Aaaaaah,” marveled the practice round patrons as the ball shot downrange, landing 20 yards past playing partner Jim Furyk and continuing to climb the hill that defends the first fairway.
Golf’s Generation Flex has arrived.
You’re away, world.
Guys have hit it far forever, but what is going on these days on the PGA Tour is something different. At his peak, John Daly could fly it by everyone, cup a cigarette and somehow gain two pounds on the walk to his ball. But in Johnson, and a cadre of young players like him who are making an increasing racket on Tour, the game is flirting with something approaching athleticism.
Yes, there is a golfer who can dunk. Johnson, 6-foot-4 with the body fat of celery, says he still can if ever the need arose.
Among the victors on Tour so far this season is a former power-hitting third baseman from the Venezuelan junior leagues (Jhonattan Vegas) and a kid who initially gave up a golf scholarship at Kansas to pursue Division II basketball (Gary Woodland). Not in the Masters field, but with three top 10 finishes this year is a guy who pitched in three California high school all-star games (Spencer Levin).
And never underestimate the athletic ability of anyone named Bubba.
“You put any kind of ball in his hands and he can throw it a long, long ways,” said Georgia’s golf coach Chris Haack of the Bulldogs big hope here this week, Bubba Watson.
The old cliche about golfers not being athletes is getting increasingly difficult to perpetuate. Who out there will make us feel better about ourselves if not for the now endangered pot-bellied pro?
The new wave also could make for a new-look Masters, given that it is played on a course that so respects power.
Diminutive Canadian Mike Weir won one without the benefit of great length, but is still rather stoked about what he is seeing on his job site: “Guys attack a course more than they have in the past. It’s an exciting time for golf.”
Generation Flex all came of age on the example of Tiger Woods, whose devotion to the fitness trailer helped redesign the template of the pro golfer. Now he is in the position of trying to catch back up to the fit field he helped create -- and sounding almost happy about it.
“We are finally going to get athletes,” Woods said last month. “Guys who can dunk. Guys who could have played baseball or could have played football but, no, they are playing golf instead. Now all the speed and power and fast twitch (muscle fiber) is being used to play golf.”
Not that there weren’t athletes in the game in the past. Three-time U.S. Open champ Hale Irwin (1974, ’79 and ’90) was an all-Big 8 defensive back at Colorado. Mike Souchak, a 16-time winner from 1955-64, played football at Duke. Arnold Palmer was just plain country strong.
But the greater number of players who look the part of athlete is the new Tour trademark.
“There’s certainly a lot more physicalness on the Tour today than there was overall when I started,” Palmer said. “A lot of guys [from his era] just played golf. There were golf professionals and they didn’t concentrate on physical fitness like the guys that are playing today.”
The easiest way to find the leading athletes on Tour is to scan the PGA Tour’s driving stats. Johnson, Watson and Woodland are all among the top eight in average distance (Woods is currently a distant 67th).
But there are other advantages to not being a slob golfer -- who would have guessed?
Georgia Tech golf coach Bruce Heppler says that if all things else are equal between two prospective recruits, he is more likely to lean toward the one with the more diverse athletic experience.
“The first thing to go with a player under stress is his [swing] rhythm. The more athletic a player is, the more rhythm he has to rely on,” Heppler said.
Three-time major-winner Ernie Els agrees. “I think guys who have basic ball sense, who can throw a ball or catch a ball or play another sport, when they get over a golf shot, they look athletic. More athletic in their posture and even in the way they hit the ball. Those kind of players, I think, have a longer life span.”
Of course, there is much more golf to play after launch time. Hitting far and looking good in a short-sleeve shirt are not the only qualifications for a Masters champion.
For example, look at the second shots of the Johnson-Furyk twosome Monday. The wise older Furyk put his approach below the hole, and canned a relatively routine birdie putt. Johnson flew his shot long, leaving him a slippery downhill 8-footer that caught no part of the hole.
In the end, when the Masters winner celebrates on the Sunday’s final green, no one measures his vertical leap.
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