Just about two years ago Dustin Johnson led a brigade of players to LIV Golf.
Johnson was critical to prove the talent coming to the league would be credible and his inclusion influenced others to follow. A 24-time PGA Tour winner. A two-time major champion. A bona-fide top player in the world who was No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking when 2022 began.
Two years later, Johnson is an afterthought.
He ranks No. 392 in the OWGR but that doesn’t include his play in LIV events. In Data Golf, which does include LIV play, he’s a pedestrian 62nd in the world—more than 50 spots south since the start of 2023.
His defenders will point to DJ winning LIV Las Vegas this past February but he’s been nothing in majors for a few years. Johnson has no top-five finishes in his last 13 majors, including five missed cuts in that stretch. It’s a large sample size of mediocrity.
It’s been getting worse as Johnson’s last five major rounds have been 74-81-78-79-74 for a 28-over total. It’s stunningly poor golf for someone who was recently the best player in golf.
All of this hit me watching Thursday morning when Johnson, 1-over through his first five holes, pulled his tee shot wildly into the trees on the par-4 15th. His ball only went about 180 yards and 40 yards left of the fairway. He chopped at it twice to get it back in play.
While he was punching out of those trees on 15, commentator John Maginnes made a stinging quip: “He will need a fifth ace to get out this mess,” referring to DJ’s Four Aces LIV squad.
By the time he tapped in for a double bogey six—on a day when red numbers were rampant—DJ was seven strokes behind leader Xander Schauffele. That gap would only grow throughout the next few hours, reaching 11 shots by lunch time.
His golf is sloppy. His ball speed, once exceeding 180 mph with ease every time he pulled driver out of the bag, has been slipping. It’s like watching a flamethrower pitcher suddenly struggle to consistently hit the mid-90s with his fastball. Rory McIlroy, in the same group as Johnson, looked like he was playing a different sport at times.
Some of this can be explained by age. Johnson will be 40 in June. He’s on the back nine of his career.
But some of this also feels like Johnson is the first truly great player to sail off into the sunset after taking an obscene amount of money to play on LIV.
I noted in my Netflix Full Swing review that Johnson admits how his priorities have changed. He called his 2023 U.S. Open prep “lazy.” He says he practices less and doesn’t consider competitive golf the most important thing in his life. He has two sons. Life has changed. He doesn’t owe anyone anything in terms of his golf.
There was nothing else left for him to prove on the course, unless he really wanted to push for more. He is a clear Hall of Fame player and one of the indelible golf characters of the 2000s.
At the same time, there is a biting symbolism where DJ represents the past two years in professional golf.
We like to see athletes battle. We like to see them genuinely care. We like to see them frustrated when they struggle. We like to see them cry out of joy, just like Johnson did when he won the Masters.
We want to see them get paid but not ahead of those other factors. And that is what professional golf has become—a place where people want to get paid more than they want to compete against the best players.
It is sad to watch. DJ is such an immense talent. Golf is a game of longevity. It’s heartbreaking to see his motivation apparently run out of gas.
For 15 years, there had been a path for him to win five or six majors and become one of the game’s legends. Unless we are in store for some kind of magical comeback, he’s not going to get there. His peers—McIlroy, Koepka, Spieth, Scheffler and others—have already surpassed, or will surpass, DJ’s major record.
As good as DJ has been, he left a lot on the table. That’s the level of talent he was. I think, if there is nothing else noteworthy coming for him, DJ’s legacy will be a guy with nearly unmatchable talent who only got part way to realizing all of it. He’ll be remembered for being a tremendous player but there will be people who also remember him as someone who would have gladly hung out on a boat all day if he still got his money.
Maybe the toughest part is that few people are talking about DJ now. He’s fading away while the conversation is about other things—money in golf, the game being divided, who is on the PGA Tour board, etc. When the talk is about the golf itself, Johnson isn’t even mentioned. It’s like he has disappeared completely.
When people ask why the current golf landscape actively hurts the game, this is the case study.
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