Weekend Wrap

We're off to breakfast at something called The Biscuit Company, so no time to dawdle...

DJ in Full - I've historically been rather unimpressed by Dustin Johnson, as I never felt compelled to take his career more seriously than he himself did.  But the last year has been quite impressive, as Doug Ferguson notes:

AUSTIN, Texas -- The final day lasted longer than Dustin Johnson wanted. The outcome was what everyone expected. 

Johnson, a golfing machine with no discernible weakness and hardly any pulse, won the Dell Technologies Match Play on Sunday for his third straight victory, this one making him the first person to earn a career sweep of the four World Golf Championships. 

He had to work the hardest for this one.

Getting through seven matches will never be easy, but there's little harder than winning when everyone expects you to.

Rahm had these gracious words about the winner:

"What am I going to say that you guys don't know?" Rahm said. "If his putter had been hot, I wouldn't have had a chance, no question. ... It's amazing how he's able to keep cool the entire round. It amazes me. And he's just a perfect, complete player."

Rex Hoggard provides the overview of DJ's run:

Since winning the U.S. Open last June, Johnson has won six of 17 starts, including the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in dominant fashion. That’s a 35 percent winning clip that includes a major and three World Golf Championship keepsakes to become the first player to claim all four WGCs

OK, that last bit is a red herring, but six of seventeen is Tigeresque....  and Butch Harmon is well-positioned to make the comparison:

“He drives it great like TW back in the day. He's a good putter, not great, but good. He has learned to hit irons off tees which I've been pushing for seven years, and has a 3-iron with a graphite shaft that he hits miles. He really now has become the total package. As you know nothing rattles him. That is a big plus.” 

To be historically honest, Woods’ run in 2000, for example, included nine wins in 20 starts (45 percent) and three majors along with a WGC high card, but that doesn’t invalidate the parallel.

Well, if DJ wins his next three....  

The Tour Confidential panel took on DJ's ascendancy as well:

1. Dustin. Johnson. The World No. 1 continued to widen the gap between himself and the Tour's other alpha dogs by winning the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. (DJ never trailed in a single match, including in his 1-up win in the final over the surging Spaniard, Jon Rahm.) With three wins in his last three starts over big-time fields, has Johnson proven that his best is better than any other player's best? 

Josh Sens: It's proven that he's playing the best golf in the world right now. But we haven't seen McIlroy or Day firing on all cylinders over that same time period. When they're all at their best, the margins between them are so slight you'd need an electron microscope to detect them. Here's hoping that they're all running at maximum capacity at Augusta.

Jeff Ritter: Sens is right -- Rory has been playing his way back from injury and Day has been playing with a heavy heart. Jordan Spieth has a win this year and is essentially Las Vegas' co-favorite for Augusta -- but as we stand today DJ has reached another level. He's entrenched as the man to beat at Augusta.

As I said of Jason Day back when he was the Colossus Bestriding The World, when the best player is also the hottest player, it's not gonna look like fair fight.  But we've seen such streaks from Rory, Spieth and Day, so let's learn from those, shall we?

I was surprised to hear that DJ is playing at Houston next week, which points out the issue of having this event so close to The Masters.  DJ and John Rahm looked like they were running on fumes at times in their final, and seven matches is the golf equivalent of the Bataan Death March.  That would be my primary concern about DJ as he heads to Augusta....

I'd be remiss if I didn't just note that yesterday's final round privided a helpful reminder of why keeping a match-play event on the calendar is so important.  Yes, we lost Rory, Jason and Jordan too early, and Phil couldn't quite keep it going....  But put the event on a good golf course and the format will deliver....  It may not deliver in the final match every year, which creates issues with TV for sure.  But in the five days you'll find enough to make it all worthwhile....

Just a couple of notes on things that amused me before moving on....  Saturday night our Shack took his best shot at setting up the semis:

Roundup: Intriguing 2017 WGC Match Play Semis Set

I really love this final group of four in the 2017 WGC Dell Match Play and here's why: 

-Dustin Johnson, the best player on the planet. 

-Jon Rahm, Spaniard trending to become the best player faster than even his biggest cheerleaders expected. 

-Bill Haas, immensely talented veteran who plays quickly, yet overcame Kevin Na's horrific pace and is also peaking in time for Augusta. 

-Hideto Tanihara, hard-swinging Japan Golf Tour vet who puts the world in World Golf Championship. Oh, and he's going to the Masters now, Rex Hoggard notes for GolfChannel.com.

Geoff, I'll stipulate to three out of four.  But while I'm sure those NBC suits were over the moon at having him in the semis, trying to convince me to be interested in Bill Haas is a bridge too far.  "Immensely talented"?  Compared to me?  For sure....  When you look up "Journeyman" in the dictionary.....

This seems more like it:

I bear no animus to the Haas family, he's just kind of boring....

The Road To Augusta - The Tour Confidential panel also fielded this inevitable question:

2. The Match Play represented the last time a large number of the world's top-ranked players will compete in the same field before the Masters in two weeks. Besides DJ and Rahm, whose game in Austin indicated that he might be primed to charge up the 'boards at Augusta?

Sens: Mickelson administered a couple of pretty healthy spankings out there. Like a lot of people, I always like his chances at Augusta. All the more so after this week. But I'm still taking Rahm, as I did a month ago. 

Ritter: I haven't seen much of Alex Noren, but came away impressed. He's a proven winner in Europe and gave DJ his toughest battle of the week before the final.

 I had to dig deep to find anyone except Phil in their answers....  

I'm gonna go with the ever-popular time will tell...  Oh, if you're a Phil guy, I get that you saw enough this week to get your hopes up.  I just don't think that the match-play tells us much about the year's first major.  

This is at least a more interesting Masters query:

4. Jordan Spieth, who failed to advance through the round-robin matches in Austin, admitted last week that he has been unable to sweep his 2016 Masters meltdown under the rug. "The Masters lives on for a year," he said. "It will be nice once this year's finished … to be brutally honest with you." In light of those remarks, do you expect Spieth's Masters demons could impact his performance at Augusta this year?

Sens: More than being brutally honest with us, he's being brutally honest with himself, which you've got to love. It's a lot healthier than denial, and I can only imagine it will help him at the Masters. It's only natural that he's a bit haunted by what happened. But I expect those demons to vanish once the first shots are in the air this year.

Wood: Oh, if only we all could have Spieth's "demons" at Augusta. In his first three years of competing, I believe he's gone 2nd, 1st, 2nd. Of course he'll feel some butterflies as he walks to that 12th tee. But you know what? We ALL will. Spieth's demons will last precisely as long as it takes him to make his first 20-footer on Thursday, which if history holds will be within an hour. The fact that he's brutally honest about it is so refreshing, and if it impacts his performance, I think it would impact it positively. He's one of the few golfers who plays better with a little chip on his shoulder.

John Wood continues to impress in his analysis, as that last bit I think is spot-on.  He wants to be an underdog, which is kind of sweet given his 2-1-2 finishes in his three Masters.  But anytime the pin is on the right of No. 12, you have to expect him to fly the green....

As for this one, meh....

5. This year's Masters marks the 20th anniversary of Tiger Woods's historic 12-stroke win in 1997, and yet it's quite possible that Woods may not be in the field to celebrate the occasion. "I'm trying," he said on Good Morning America last week. "I'm trying every day to get back and play." Give us a percentage chance that we'll see Woods tee it up at Augusta. 

Sens: Two. 

Ritter: So pessimistic! Tiger absolutely dusted Michael Strahan in that putting contest. I've got him at 2.5, and I hope I'm wrong. It would be a blast to see him in the field and able to compete at a high level.

Compete at a high level?  That's a good one, Jeff....

And the boys are getting a little silly here:

6. Adidas is rolling out a golf shoe inspired by a Masters staple: the pimento cheese sandwich. Put on your Project Runway cap and propose another piece of Masters-infused attire that no golfer's wardrobe would be complete without.

Wood: How can one call themselves a fan of the Masters and not have a crisp, white, long-sleeved jumpsuit in their closet? Choose your number to put on the breast pocket, and the last name across the back in Augusta National green. I've begged and pleaded over the years to let me take one out on the town with me that week, to no avail. But I will say this: when we have to leave the practice facility and the caddie locker room and head across Washington Road to where the equipment trailers sit, we know what it must be like to be a movie star stalked by the paparazzi. Cars slow down, the women catcall, grown men want their pictures taken with us -- as they should. It is a part of the Masters as recognizable as anything else. Hey, maybe the winning caddie should be presented with a commemorative jumpsuit to the player's green jacket?

If you're the reading kind, Golf.com helpfully provides a summary of "A literary tradition unlike any other".   Among other worthy entries is this, which just happens to be in the knapsack for Friday's trip home:

The Gals - Are the developing a Tiger problem?  A good young player runs away from the field:

Mirim Lee came to Tony Ziegler last summer fighting a two-way miss off the tee. The

solution to her problem, he said, had been lost in translation. 

“Once she understood it,” said Ziegler, “she just flew.” 

Lee posted four top-four finishes in the remainder of 2016, and then broke through in a big way at the Kia Classic, where she demolished the field by six strokes for her third career LPGA title. Lee, 26, won twice in 2014 at the Meijer LPGA Classic and Reignwood LPGA Classic. She’s the fourth South Korean to win this year.

But all anyone cares about is the young lady that wasn't there for the weekend:

One week after playing bogey-free for 72 holes, World No. 1 Lydia Ko didn’t play the weekend in Carlsbad, Calif. Ko has missed the cut only twice in her 91 career starts as an LPGA professional.

With their first major this week, Lydia's game is clearly not in a good place.... It has to be the glasses, no?

Time to get started on my day, and you probably should as well....