Travelers Championship Recap: DJ Gets It Done

One by one, Dustin Johnson had seen other elite players overtake him in the world rankings, slowly pushing him to a back burner in the conversation about who is the best player in golf.  Last week, the former world No. 1 fell out of the top five for the first time in four years.

The fall was brief.

Johnson announced he is back in a big way, winning the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands on Sunday. He thus climbed from No. 6 to No. 3, returning the favor to three golfers who had bypassed him: Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka and Webb Simpson.

Just six days past his 36th birthday, Johnson won for the first time in 16 months to extend his streak for capturing a tournament to 13 seasons, fourth on the all-time list. The other three? Arnold Palmer (17), Jack Nicklaus (17) and Tiger Woods (14). Not too shabby.

Johnson said in his post-tournament news conference that a while back he had strained a tendon in his surgically-repaired knee. He hadn't played much before the PGA Tour season was shut down – this was only his seventh start all season -- and admittedly barely played during the break. But he said he was working hard of late and it showed, especially on the weekend.

After opening with a 1-under 69 that left him outside the cutline, Johnson shifted into overdrive with a 64, a career-best 61 and a closing 67 to fend of pesky Kevin Streelman by one stroke. He stood T79 after Thursday, by far the best comeback on Tour this season – no other winner had been lower than T28 after a first round.

Johnson didn't drive all that well during the week, especially on Sunday when he had a couple of near disasters on 13 and 15. But he still wound up ranked sixth in the field in SG tee to green. And he was a stellar fourth in SG putting. When he hits his irons and putter that well – especially his putter -- it's almost game over.

Johnson's standing in the top-5 is far from guaranteed, of course; he's tightly bunched with Thomas, Koepka and Simpson, though he also is within range of No. 2  Jon Rahm. Top-ranked Rory McIlroy is another story. 

One thing we know for sure is that with Johnson now healthy, the rest of the PGA Tour season just got a whole lot more interesting.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Kevin Streelman
Streelman's season is enough to give you whiplash. He's played 17 events and missed 10 cuts. Ouch! But he also has two runners-up at the Travelers and Pebble Beach, plus another top-5 at the Sanderson Farms and a T12 at the CJ Cup. That adds up to Exhibit A on why most players on Tour need only a handful of good weeks to make their entire season and ensure their future. There's always a good chance that for Streelman, one of those weeks will come at River Highlands, where he was the 2014 winner and now has four other top-10s through the years. He jumped from 95th to 51st in the world rankings; his best is 36th.

Will Gordon
Gordon's player page on the Tour website listed him on the Mackenzie Tour last week. But after a 6-under 64 on Sunday, the 23-year-old tied for third to earn special temporary membership on the PGA Tour. A little more than year ago, Gordon was still at Vanderbilt when he went to Canada and won one of the Q-schools, then  finished 20th on the Order of Merit. This season, he got exemptions into some fields on the PGA Tour and showed great promise with three top-25s in six starts heading into the Travelers. But he still had zero status. Now, Gordon will be around at least through the end of the season. Not many guys jump from Canada to the PGA Tour, but Gordon has.

Jon Rahm
Let's talk about Rahm here, even though it was another disappointing week with a tie for 37th. (Rahm has now meekly gone MC-T33-T37 out of the reboot.) Gordon said after his round that Rahm, his playing partner, was a huge help. "He didn't play great today, but I was really impressed with how kind and how supportive he was to me, and he just told me to birdie the last three and I wouldn't have anything to worry about." Rahm himself is only 25 and has not exactly been known for keeping his emotions in check.  So amid a poor Sunday round, he put that aside to help a younger, far-less-accomplished golfer. Kudos to Rahm.

Bryson DeChambeau
Another week, another top-5. DeChambeau made it five in six starts since Riviera with a tie for fourth. It has allowed him to climb back into the top-10 in the world rankings. He's now headed to Detroit, one of the few big names to play in all four events after the reboot. It's hard to argue with DeChambeau's big weight gain, at least right now.

Gary Woodland
Woodland missed the cut a week after tying for 62nd at the RBC Heritage. Before that, he tied for ninth at Colonial. Much has been made of DeChambeau's big weight gain. Woodland, conversely, has lost 25. He said he did to better position himself for a stretch in which he plans to play 10 times in 13 weeks. It may work out for him, but so far it's Advantage, Bryson.

Brendon Todd
A fantastic week all came apart for Todd on his 66th hole of the week. Faced with a steep uphill lie in thick greenside rough on No. 12, he shanked it and wound up with a triple-bogey 7. That was that. It stings now, but Todd no doubt realizes that even though he tumbled to out of the top-10 (T11), it was his best finish since the fall, some 10 events ago.

Viktor Hovland
Hovland turned in his third top-25 since golf returned, this one the best of them all, a tie for 11th that moved him into the top-50 for the first time, at No. 45. He will be one of the headliners in a decent-but-not-great field this week in Detroit.

Patrick Reed
After opening with a 70, Reed was staring at a second straight missed cut, something that hasn't happened in more than two years. He rebounded with a 66 on Friday, then went 69-64 on the weekend to zoom up the leaderboard and notched a top-25 (T24). Reed will make it four straight weeks out of the restart when he heads to the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Phil Mickelson
The new quinquagenarian (yes, I had to look it up) came out of the gate with an astonishing 64-63 at River Highlands. But he, um, petered out with a 71-71. Still, it was a top-25, only his second in 11 starts this season. Mickelson is now 50, so we'll cut him some slack. But his continued harping on "hitting bombs" has got to stop. He's not that long, ranking 49th on Tour in driving distance. He's also wildly inaccurate (187th) and it's killing him. He's well outside the top-125 in SG off the tee and the top-150 in SG approach and GIR. Any army general will tell you that bombs work only if they hit their target. Mickelson is way off target.

Kevin Kisner
Three weeks in, Kisner has gone T29-MC-MC after a short week in Hartford. He'll now be one of the handful of top guys to play a fourth straight tournament this week. Kisner really needs to work on his irons – he's outside the top-150 in both SG approach and GIR. And his putting all of a sudden isn't all that hot, ranked 91st. Kisner was ranked 20-12-30-3 the previous four seasons.

Collin Morikawa
The made-cut streak to start his pro career ended at 22. Just as well, as the comparison to Tiger Woods (a record 25) would have been a burden. Morikawa has not seemed to have recovered from missing a 3-footer in the Colonial playoff. He was T64 at Harbour Town before exiting River Highlands early. Morikawa's irons surely are laser-like, but he has a lot of work to do with his short game. He's ranked 133rd in SG around the green and 174th in SG putting.

Sahith Theegala and Peter Kuest
The two college stars made their pro debuts with missed cuts. They will try again this week in Detroit. Theegala was the Player of the Year out of Pepperdine and Kuest was an all-American at BYU. They did not arrive to the same fanfare as Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa and Matthew Wolff, but then again their final college seasons were cut short, screwing so many things up for them.

Matt Wallace
Wallace was left to play solo on Friday with Denny McCarthy and Bud Cauley pulling out, and he wasn't happy about it, thinking the Tour could have somehow given him a playing partner. He ended up missing the cut by five strokes. It's been a tough 2020 to date for the Englishman, who has fallen from 30th in the OWGR to 49th. He has made nine worldwide starts and he has only one top-25 (Bay Hill). Wallace spoke to Golf Digest about the Tour leaving him to play all by himself.

Daniel Summerhays
It was almost a storybook ending for the 36-year-old veteran in his final event before retiring. Summerhays has made more than 200 starts on the PGA Tour without ever winning (he's had two runners-up). This season, he has largely been relegated to the Korn Ferry Tour. He announced that this week's event, the Utah Championship, would be his finale. Playing on his boyhood course, Summerhays stunningly closed with a 62 to take the clubhouse lead that lasted for hours. But not forever. He wound up in a three-way playoff with Paul Haley and Kyle Jones, and Jones won.

COVID-19 Update

Another week, another positive COVID-19 test, this one sidelining Denny McCarthy, the top putter on Tour this season. McCarthy is having his best season, recording three top-10s and finding himself among the top 60 in the FedExCup Standings. Now, we won't see him at least until the Memorial. The positive test also resulted in Thursday's playing partner Bud Cauley withdrawing out of "an abundance of caution" -- as opposed to good ol' regular caution? -- as the Tour likes to say. Jason Day tested negative  Saturday and was able to continue, but he went off as a single about an hour after his scheduled tee time as he awaited the test results. It was a pretty extraordinary allowance the Tour made, changing a player's tee time. Can you imagine that happening in any other sport? Dylan Frittelli tested positive before getting on the charter flight to Detroit and must now self-quarantine in Connecticut.