It was the Thud Heard ‘Round The World.
Dustin Johnson was heading down some unimposing stairs Wednesday afternoon while the rain fell outside the home he rented for the week in Augusta.
The world’s No. 1, the hottest player on the planet was in his stocking feet, on hardwood when the unthinkable happened.
“I fell on my elbow and the lower left side of my back,” is how Johnson described the untimely tumble that would eliminate him from the 2017 Masters and thus open the championship door wide open for whoever wants to walk through it on Sunday afternoon.
Johnson tried his best, he really did. They started treating his injury within an hour after he fell. “Ice, heat, ice, heat,” was how Johnson described it. The best of the best who were hanging around The Masters came by to help him. His tee time was the last one on Thursday and surely the tour’s most athletic player would rally.
D.J. showed up and warmed up Thursday afternoon. He walked gingerly and his swing wasn’t really what it’s supposed to be.
He talked briefly with Fred Ridley, Chairman of the Competition Committee at Augusta National, then D.J. headed for the first tee.
It was there that it hit him:
“I’m just not going to be able to compete like this,” he said.
“It really sucks bad.”
D.J. said he was only about 70 percent, he could swing the club back, but nothing good was happening on the way down. “My back was catching at impact,” he said.
And just like that, the man who had won his last three events, the man so heavily favored to slip on the Green Jacket on Sunday, the man with the game to tame Augusta National, was gone.
Meanwhile, out on the course, the gang was getting roughed up out there by winds that ranged anywhere from a low of 20 to a high of 40 miles per hour for most of the day.
There were birdies, sure, but guys couldn’t sustain.
Thomas Pieters, the hero of the European Ryder Cup team, had it to five-under par after 10 holes. Then Amen Corner bit him. He bogeyed 11 then hit it into Rae’s Creek at 12 and made double-bogey. Had his chance to take the clubhouse lead but two missed short putts at the 18th rendered a double and he turned 70 into 72.
And that was the theme of the blustery day.
Augusta National is hard enough under ordinary conditions but on Thursday, three-time champion Nick Faldo estimated that par “was about 75.”
The wind buried Jordan Spieth early this year. He didn’t have to wait until the 12th hole on Sunday.
Spieth had a routine wedge for his third into the par five 15th, into the wind of course. He underestimated it. Didn’t land it far enough into the green and watched his Titleist backspin its way into the front pond. His sixth flew long, his pitch left him 20 feet for bogey. Three putts he walked off the green with a quadruple-bogey nine. By day’s end, Spieth would shoot a disappointing 75.
With Johnson out of it, Rory McIlroy is left as the highest-ranked player in the field and he survived a rough day for the big name players. McIlroy rallied with three back-nine birdies to shoot even par and keep himself in the thick of it.
But this was supposed to be Dustin Johnson’s Masters.
No one has played as well as him the past two months leading here.
Now it will be someone else’s Green Jacket come Sunday.
