Dustin Johnson will be eager to get his LIV Golf season off to the best possible start this week, with the two-time major champion in the field for LIV Golf Riyadh.
LIV Golf Riyadh 2025 is first up on the schedule this season, with Jon Rahm the defending individual champion and Ripper GC the defending team champion.
Johnson knows all about such success, having topped the individual points list in 2022 and guiding 4Aces GC to the team championship title the same year.
The American was one of the first names to make the switch from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf, having won 24 titles on the former before the move.
Two of those victories came in major championships, with Johnson winning the US Open in 2016 and The Masters in 2020.
Dustin Johnson joked with Phil Mickelson over Champions Dinner after 2020 Masters win
The latter involves the lowest score in Masters history, with the champion remarkably having finished on 20-under at Augusta National.
His brother and caddie Austin Johnson has now looked back on the victory while discussing The Masters with Dustin and fellow LIV Golf player Phil Mickelson.
“So especially when I first started caddying you guys would always play a Tuesday morning match at Augusta, kind of 18 holes, see where you’re at, go against each other, and then Wednesday nine-hole practice, get ready or whatever,” he said.
“And I’ll never forget everybody tees off on number one, and we hadn’t got down to the bottom of the hill yet, you wait until the gallery got just wide enough to where they couldn’t hear you, you come over with that smirk on your face and say DJ, you got any plans for dinner tonight?
“It’s early in the morning, DJ, just not thinking. Yeah, I got the chef in town, going to cook some steaks up or whatever, and you just couldn’t hold back with laughing because you’re giving him a poke of course for the Champions dinner that night.
“I think that was 2019, we finished second, of course Tiger went on and won. But 2020, big boy ends up taking down the Green Jacket.
“And it’s chaotic after that but we settled down, and we’re getting on the plane and he turns around to me and goes ‘I text Phil’. I go ‘You text Phil?’ He goes ‘Yeah I told that motherf—– I know what I’m doing for dinner Tuesday night’. He couldn’t wait to get back to you.”
Dustin Johnson eclipses Im Sung-jae in record-breaking 2020 Masters victory
Mickelson will miss LIV Golf Riyadh due to injury, with Johnson grouped with Cam Smith and Bryson DeChambeau first up.
Smith captains an all-Australian Ripper GC side that won the team championship last season, with DeChambeau captain of Crushers GC.
The pair, along with Mickelson and Johnson, are major champions, with Smith winning The Open Championship and DeChambeau winning the US Open twice.
Veteran Mickelson meanwhile has three Masters wins among his six major championship wins, but all of his efforts weren’t quite as headline-grabbing as Johnson’s in 2020.
Smith saw the action up close as he finished T2 with Im Sung-jae as Johnson posted rounds of 65, 70, 65 and 68 to end on 268.
Im’s 273 remains the lowest score in a Masters debut, but it still wasn’t enough for the title as he finished five shots behind the champion.
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