Major trio produces minor results at the PGA Championship

SPRINGFIELD, N.J.—There comes a moment in every tournament when a player knows the day is lost. That moment can come late in the proceedings, like in this year’s British Open, when Phil Mickelson dueled Henrik Stenson right to the final holes.

Or it can come very, very early, as it did with Dustin Johnson at the PGA Championship, when he double-bogeyed the third hole and kicked off a tailspin that, in one afternoon, undid all the good he’d done in majors all season long.

Johnson, along with Stenson and Danny Willett, made up this year’s version of the famed major winners grouping, the trio of calendar-year winners that the PGA Championship traditionally pairs together in the first two rounds. Johnson’s U.S. Open trophy, Stenson’s Claret Jug and Willett’s green jacket were enough to get them yoked together, but they weren’t enough to get two-thirds of the trio playing anything approaching decent golf.

“I think all of us are pretty happy with what’s happened this year. We all had our major breakthroughs, if you want to put it that way in the majors,” Stenson said after the round. “At the same time, we’ve got to move on. We’re in the middle of a busy season. I’ve got a lot of golf to play. It’s this week here, the final major, and then we have the Olympics, the FedExCup, The Ryder Cup, Race to Dubai.”

Johnson won’t be playing in a couple of those events, and he might not be playing at the PGA Championship much longer, either. His card was the ugliest of the three, two double-bogeys the lowlight of a round that included a cringeworthy +5 performance on the wicked “Sobering Seven” that kick off Baltusrol.

On the two closing par 5s, holes that he should have devoured, Johnson could only manage a par on the 17^th, and then dunked his tee shot on 18. That’s like LeBron James missing one layup, and then knocking himself unconscious on the backboard on another. He finished with the dreaded double-hockey-sticks—77—and you can feel free to make the jokes yourself about a guy who married Wayne Gretzky’s daughter.

“He just didn’t have a good day out there,” Stenson said of Johnson. “We all know what he’s capable of doing with a golf ball and on a golf course. I’m sure he’ll bounce back shortly.”

Stenson himself, just 11 days removed from his epic British Open win, was the only one of the trio to produce anything approaching decent golf. He rolled through the opening nine at a decent even-par, and then carded birdies on 12, 15, and 18 to finish at three under, two strokes off the lead and tied for fifth overall.

“I feel I can carry that momentum I had at The Open Championship,” he said, “and I guess the start shows that we’re not too far away when we teed it up again.” The question for Stenson, of course, is how well he’ll be able to sustain his momentum from Troon. Will that catch up to him before Sunday?

Willett, meanwhile, might still be sleeping off the effects of his unlikely and unexpected Augusta celebration; he’s placed T37 and T53 at the two majors since then. By the time he missed a birdie putt at the 17^th, he was talking to himself and scolding his putter. He would go on to finish 1-over for the round, six strokes off the lead.

Both Willett and Johnson have placed themselves in precarious positions to even see the weekend; Jimmy Walker has set the first-round bar at five-under, and evening rains are likely to soften up the course and lead to even lower scores. At least the trio is slated to go off at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning; if you’re going to miss the cut, you may as well get a jump on the weekend.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.