Dustin Johnson is golf’s top ranked player and he’s optimized for Augusta

The deadpan Dustin Johnson has found something that impresses him. It’s hard to provoke a reaction from the No. 1 player in the world, who rarely expends more than is the necessary minimum when his input or emotions are requested on a matter.

But DJ is excited. He’s out playing a practice round at Riviera, where he’s the defending champ. He knows Riviera, a classic and challenging golden age design and arguably the best course on the PGA Tour schedule. He knows how to play it well and win against one of the best fields on the entire PGA Tour schedule. So a practice round is much more than just scouting the course. DJ is testing new golf balls with an entourage of a support system around him and he’s just hit one that has made him feel feelings.

“What was that one?! I don’t know what that was, but I like that.”

A TaylorMade rep, the equipment company DJ has long been under contract with, tosses him another unmarked ball to test. The rep is carrying a blank white box of balls, trailing DJ wherever he goes to try and maximize the most out this practice game at Riv. There are dual shows to watch. DJ hitting shots is always an exhilarating display. The TaylorMade reps scurrying around him to make sure arguably the most dangerous weapon in golf is fully optimized is a second fascinating study.

There are playing partners, as is custom for a practice round. Young stud Beau Hossler is there and he and DJ chat intermittently on tee boxes and around the green, as one does for these laid back pre-competition days. But there’s still a purpose in every shot and every movement, even for a morning that does not matter on the scorecard. The rep with the mysterious box of balls follows, as do two more aids with TrackMan and a laptop spitting out instant data.

The topic of DJ and his TrackMan have become an inside joke for golf nuts who watch the PGA Tour every week. Rarely does a broadcast go by without an announcer or analyst mentioning how “Dustin Johnson has used his TrackMan to become one of the best wedge players in the world.” It’s akin to when an announcer drops the ICYMI nugget that Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas are friends, as if you’d not heard so the prior 250 times.

At Riviera, the TrackMan goes everywhere. It’s set up on the tee. It’s broken out and set up in middle of the fairway. DJ and the assembled crew are getting data from multiple shots — drivers, irons, wedges. Given the joke about DJ and his TrackMan, I could not help but be amused seeing it in action at every turn as he tested new golf balls. But everything, from DJ on through the army of TaylorMade reps optimizing him, is done with a purpose.

Johnson has held the No. 1 player in the world title for more than a year now, which in this era, qualifies as a long time. He began 2018 with a dominant eight-shot win at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, the annual opener at Kapalua on Maui. The entire first quarter of the schedule is now littered with events where he’s won. He was the defending champion this year alone at three Q1 tourneys — Riviera, the WGC Mexico Championship, and the WGC Match Play.

So after spending a year at No. 1 and picking up wins all over the schedule, what’s there to change?

“I can always improve — f**k, everything can get better,” he said at Riviera. So he’s gone to tinkering more with TrackMan, testing new balls, and turning over the bag with whatever new equipment he likes that TaylorMade has cooked up for him. This year’s big change is the driver, a new M3 and M4 with the much hyped “Twist Face” technology you’ve probably seen during many of the ad breaks on a PGA Tour telecast.

DJ does not have the reputation as much of a tinkerer, unlike Tiger Woods, who wants to know every little detail and can feel even the slightest change in a club. DJ is not some ignoramus just blindly hitting whatever is put in front of him. He’ll talk about he spin differential he notices with the new drivers, but he’s not a gearhead. He’s more of a feel player than some technician worried about every little detail.

At Riviera, he wasn’t just testing new balls, but he’d also switched from an M4 to an M3, making a change he thought suited the course. As long as the PGA Tour has existed, these equipment companies have put the pros to work as endorsers and TaylorMade has arguably the most loaded stable we’ve seen with DJ, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Jon Rahm, Justin Rose, and Woods, who sits in his own category when it comes to off-course deals.

If you’re trying to market a driver, the big stick, there are few better to show it off than DJ. He’s tall and lithe, but also built like a house and has long been well-reputed as one of the best athletes to ever take up golf. This frame, an unorthodox swing, and a reservoir of talent have conspired to make him arguably the greatest driver of all time. DJ pounds it 350 yards with what often seems like a 90 percent swing. He opened the season not just with a win, but with a 430-yard drive that came just inches short from a hole-in-one on a par-4.

Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee called it the “greatest shot of all time” and then argued why for days afterwards to make it clear he wasn’t using the phrase in haste. After the round, DJ, who never uses more words than he needs to, gave the shoutout to his new M4 and the Twist Face improvement he saw in the driver. You expect DJ to be as good a marketer as it gets with his swing, but rarely with his mouth.

There’s been tinkering, but as his sustained run at world No. 1 would corroborate, DJ has solidified his approach to the game, his equipment, the people around him, and found a happy place. He’s at the top. So what’s next?

The obvious answer is the Masters is next for the world No. 1. We were robbed last year when he slipped on the stairs of his rental home the night before he was to tee off as the heavy favorite. He’d won three top-tier PGA Tour events rolling into Augusta, taken world No. 1, and there was no reason to think he wouldn’t contend and/or win his second major.

This season, DJ has that win in Maui and his worst finish in five starts is a tie for 16th at that Genesis Open at Riviera. Augusta is a place where his length will be an advantage. That’s true of almost every course in pro golf, but that advantage is accentuated at Augusta and he’ll roll in optimized for the most important venue on the schedule. Before having to WD in 2017, he placed inside the top six the preceding two years and had seemed to figure out the famed venue.

The viewer, the fan, and tournament felt robbed, but DJ, as is his wont, moved onto the next. Few players have encountered more untimely disaster, brutal luck, and rules drama than DJ has at some golf’s most important moments and events. Few players ever react to these things the way DJ does, unmoved and unfazed. Others have pegged him for a big dumb ox, but he might just have it figured out way more than the rest of us. This testimony from a January interview with Claude Harmon III, one of the instructors in that stable and entourage, was revealing.

I’ve never heard Dustin say a bad word about anybody. That’s rare for anybody. In fact, it’s the opposite. Players can get gossipy and bad-mouth each other; it’s no different than any workplace. When somebody starts to go off on, say, a really slow player, Dustin always interrupts to say, “Ah, I think he’s a good guy,” or, “He isn’t that bad.” It’s impossible to make his mind drift to unproductive or unhappy places.

This was discernible just watching him strut through the mania around him at Riviera. On the range, a gaggle of some 15 people crowded on the outskirts of where he got loose. Dustin has his brother Austin on the bag, a squadron of TaylorMade and Adidas folks making sure he has just what he needs, coaches, agents, and all manner of media trying to get a peek. Next to him stood Jason Kokrak, who had only his caddie there attending to him. But DJ rarely steps in an “unproductive” space, as Harmon might term it. He just glides through, seeking what he needs to improve and taking advantage of his position as the top-ranked player in the world.

DJ seems to exist in a naturally imperturbable state. Walking with him in practice rounds or the most competitive rounds, it’s clear that little time or effort is wasted on the inanities that might surround him. Everything is done with a purpose. He’s at the peak of his career and he’s become fully optimized both on and off the course. That’s how you stay world No. 1 and set yourself up for a green jacket.