Welcome to the era of “King” Dustin Johnson’s reign over the PGA Tour. The lanky American withstood a hard charge yesterday by Jon Rahm of Spain to lock down his third straight victory in the World Golf Championships – Dell Technologies Match Play Tournament and add leadership of the FedExCup points standings to his overall top spot perch as No. 1 in the World Golf Rankings. What’s happened is what many fellow PGA Tour competitors have feared over the last few years, and that’s that Johnson would develop a fine-tuned iron game to go with his already famous ability to smash accurate bombs off the tee.
Johnson has put in the work, and the results are yesterday’s 1-up triumph over Rahm at the Austin Country Club in the capital of Texas that gives Johnson six wins, including one major and three World Golf Championships, during the last ten months.
He never trailed
Johnson dominance is such that this win involved his playing of 112 holes from Wednesday through Sunday. He never trailed in any match at any time over that stretch. He did have to beat back a furious effort from Rahm, though, after the American had built a formidable and supposedly comfy 5-up lead through eight holes on Sunday. Rohm adopted a “what-do-I-have-to-lose” attitude and decided to go for it hole-after-hole. He even clocked a drive into the wind at the par 4, 317 yard 13th hole and made the green.
He went on to later make birdie to shave Johnson’s lead to 3-up at that point. Rahm then made back-to-back birdies at Nos. 15 and 16 to inch to within one hole of Johnson as he fired up the drama meter while the players came down the stretch.
As close as Rahn could get
However, that was as close as Rahm could get to Johnson who now has three straight wins in his last three starts – the Genesis Open, the Word Golf Championships – Mexico Championships were the first two.
In the consolation match for third place between Bill Haas of the U.S. and Hideto Tanihara of Japan, Haas prevailed by the margin of 2 and 1. Johnson had edged Tanihara 1 up, and Rahm beat Haas 3 and 2 to get into the final.
