What Dustin Johnson did in practice before The Masters has now been revealed as his big issue pointed out

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Dustin Johnson is quite simply not the player he once was, after swapping the PGA Tour for LIV Golf in 2022.

Johnson has two major championships to his name, and he won 24 PGA Tour titles as well.

The 40-year-old American has three LIV Golf wins to his name, but he hasn’t been competitive in the majors over the past couple of years.

Since the start of the 2023 season, DJ has missed four cuts out of the 11 majors he has played in, with his best finish coming with a tie for 10th at the US Open in 2023.

Johnson’s hunger to win clearly isn’t the same as it used to be.

However, there is one aspect of his game regarding his technique that is severely lacking as well.

Johnson has admitted that his putting from 20-30 feet has never been good enough, and that has continued to hold him back this year.

He is ranked in a tie for 39th for putts per greens hit in regulation on LIV this season.

What Dustin Johnson did in practice before The Masters revealed

Johnson missed the cut at the 89th edition of The Masters, after round of 74 and 73.

It was a really disappointing tournament for the 2020 Masters champion.

And now Claude Harmon – DJ’s long-term coach – has lifted the lid on the issue that continues to plague the 40-year-old two-time major champion.

When speaking on The Two Worlds Podcast, Harmon explained how the big issue for Johnson right now is his putting:

“Going in to that week (at The Masters) I think DJ was coming in with good confidence. He played well in Singapore. He played decently in Miami at Doral, which is a really hard golf course. But for DJ, major weeks, we are thinking in terms of let’s work on the putting and short game. Ball striking from DJ, he has been driving the golf ball really well so when you are working with a player at the tournament you tend to not practice their strengths. If someone is driving the ball really well, or his iron play is really good, we are not going to stand and hit a ton of those. We are going to work on what the golf course really demands and what the weaknesses are.

“For right now, certainly DJ’s weapon, even at this stage of his career, is the driver. He drove the ball as far as anybody at Augusta, so the distance is still there. He has been driving it really well. The iron game has been solid. The big thing for DJ is just putting, so the week of a major you are trying to figure out, okay they are going to be playing a lot of practice rounds. A lot of the practice rounds at Augusta are very specific practice rounds in that you kind of know where the flags are going to be. It’s a very unique golf course in that it’s the same golf course, so when you prepare for a major but specifically when you are to prepare for Augusta National you know what to prepare for. The test is the test. The golf course is the golf course. So we are not spending a ton of time technique wise unless we positively need to, a lot of it is just strategy.

“So we spent a lot of time with DJ trying to shape holes. The 10th hole at Augusta is severely downhill but you need to basically almost hit a hook from where the tee box is. You almost want to have the feeling you are trying to overdraw the golf ball. For DJ that is not a go to shape, he fades the golf ball, but there is no benefit and you can’t fade it on that hole. So we spent a lot of time trying to draw the golf ball and decide what club we were going to hit on there. Was it going to be a three wood? He carries a seven wood and a nine wood. We were trying to look at what the weather was going to be like, where the wind is going to be and how the golf course is going to play relative to the wind direction.“

Dustin Johnson says whether PGA Tour players who rejected LIV should be compensated

With a merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf seemingly still nowhere near happening right now, there is still a certain amount of friction between players on both sides of the divide.

Speaking a few months ago, Johnson responded when asked whether PGA Tour players should be entitled to compensation after rejecting offers from LIV:

“No, I don’t [think the PGA Tour owes the players who stayed loyal]. The guys who went to LIV, we took a lot of criticism. We’re the ones that took the risk for everything, so why should they be compensated? Obviously, if this merger comes along, there’ll be a lot of guys who wish they would have signed,” he said.

“I played on the PGA Tour for a long time. Joining LIV, I knew I was going to get s— for it. The diehard PGA Tour fans, they were going to be upset. But if I had to do it over again, I’d make the same decision. We knew what we were signing up for.”

It’s a fair point from Johnson, although those players who did remain loyal to the PGA Tour may well have a very different viewpoint if a merger does indeed get forced through at some point.