Dustin Johnson Wins WGC-Cadillac Championship

J.B Holmes and Bubba Watson blow leads. Dustin Johnson Wins WGC-Cadillac Championship after starting five shots back

Well, that was interesting. J.B. Holmes was the toast of the tournament for 54 holes, but he – like so many others – couldn’t close out those final 18 holes. Holmes had a five shot advantage over Bubba Watson and Dustin Johnson, but even that wasn’t enough.

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Holmes got off to a rocky start bogeying three of his first six holes. Watson, on the other hand, came out firing on all cylinders birding three of the first four holes and four of his first seven holes.

After seven rounds, Watson was 10-under, Holmes 8-under, and Johnson was 7-under. It looked like Watson was going to win again and win back-to-back WGC events. The last golfer to do that was Tiger Woods back in 2013 when he won the WHC-Cadillac Championship and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Even though Watson has won two majors and a WGC event in his career, he still fell victim to the final nine holes. For as well as Watson played on the first nine, he gave most of it back on the back nine. Watson bogeyed 11, 12, and 14 to fall to 7-under, which is where he won end up finishing.

Johnson moved to 8-under with a birdie on 10 and a birdie on 15 ended up being enough to win the WGC-Cadillac Championship. Holmes would bogey 14, but he did end up birding 16 and he had a chance to catch D.J. on the final couple of holes, but he couldn’t do it.

Conditions weren’t easy, plenty of golfers shot really high today, so kudos to Johnson for shooting a 3-under and getting himself into position to win. The two low rounds of the day came from Marcel Siem, who shot a 5-under, and Danny Willett who shot 4-under.

Victor Dubuisson had the worst round of the day shooting a 13-over. He started the day at 1-under par, and was in prime position to have a quality finish, but that 13-over dropped him all the way to 62nd. Sergio Garcia, who came in 3-under, ended up at 3-over for the tournament

We weren’t sure how well Adam Scott and Henrik Stenson would perform given Scott’s layoff and Stenson’s poor for to start the year on the European Tour, but they came out for all four days and didn’t miss a beat.

Both Scott and Stenson were consistent all four days, never really getting too high or too low. Scott and Stenson finished 4-under in a tie for 4th.

Louis Oosthuizen finished alone in 6th place at 3-under, Bill Haas and Webb Simpson finished 2-under in a tie for 7th. For as much criticism Rory McIlroy is/was getting throughout the week, he still ended up finishing tied for 9th with Ryan Moore and Kevin Na at 1-under par.

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McIlroy hasn’t played like the McIlroy we saw for the past 6-8 months ago, but he’s still playing pretty darn well. It goes back to what has been said about McIlroy, when he’s on his A+ game, he’s head and shoulders above everybody.

When he’s playing his B game it’s still better than just about everybody’s A-game and when he’s playing average or even about a B- he’s still really darn good. About top ten good. It’s all about managing expectations

Let’s get back to D.J. though Johnson won his ninth career PGA Tour event, his second WGC event, and he has now won at least one tournament in a season since 2008 (remember when he won the 2013 WGC-HSBC Championship that was technically part of the 2014 season, as well) Johnson is playing some fantastic golf and is primed up and ready to finally get over hump and win a major this year.

Next week the PGA Tour heads to Palm Harbor, Florida for the Valspar Championship. It’s a refreshing tournament to watch as the Copperhead Course is a ball-strikers course. It typically doesn’t field the best golfers, but it usually ends up being a pretty quality tournament to watch.

Next: Henrik Stenson Knows Comebacks

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