COLUMBIA, S.C. — Dustin Johnson won the Masters thousands of times before Tiger Woods helped him into that 42-long green jacket for all the world to see.
He won it from the front yard of his grandfather’s home on the northeast side of Lake Murray, with he and his kid brother — and future caddie — lashing buckets upon buckets of drives over and around neighboring houses and into the water.
Seven years ago, South Carolina Electric & Gas drew down the lake by almost 10 feet in an effort to improve the water quality. The muddy bottom exposed was layered with old golf balls.
“They found about 5,000 of them from Dustin and Austin,” said their grandfather, Art Whisnant. “They took range balls and they hit them out in the lake for 10, 12 years.”
The brothers would come to visit and rain down buckets of balatas.
“Neighbors weren’t too happy about that, but we were kids and would get bored,” Austin said. “Try to squeeze one between the houses.”
The brothers finally threaded the needle in a big way, with Dustin winning the Masters on Sunday at a record 20-under par for the tournament. He had held or shared the 54-hole lead in a major championship four previous times in his career, but this was the first time he was able to finish the job.
For the even-keeled Johnson, who had his brother on the bag, the win was highly emotional. He had dreamed of winning the Masters since his days of relentlessly practicing the game at the Weed Hill driving range, which is now an apartment complex.
“Obviously growing up in Columbia, in high school, I hit a lot of golf balls at Weed Hill,” he said. “So definitely remember hitting up there in the dark. They had lights on the range, and most nights I would shut the lights off when I was leaving.”
Wherever he went, Augusta National was always top of mind.
“Always around the putting green growing up, it was putts to win the Masters or hitting chip shots,” Johnson said. “It was always to win Augusta.”
Along the way, he won in plenty of other places. He lettered on the high school golf team as a tall, lanky seventh-grader. A friend of his grandfather’s brought him as a fill-in to a weekly money match he had with a group of buddies, and young Dustin, not yet old enough to drive, cleaned out their wallets. The fellow who brought him was told on no uncertain terms to never bring that kid back.
“He was really good at 10, 11, 12,” recalled his grandfather. “When he was in the seventh grade, he was setting a course record at a local place. They were having the high school banquet at the time, and they gave him the choice: He could either go to the banquet or stay there and break the record. He chose to stay.”
Above all, Johnson was supremely confident. According to a 2017 story by ESPN’s Ian O’Connor, Johnson had a geography teacher in middle school who asked him to identify a certain spot on a map.
“Mrs. Kennedy,” Johnson responded, “I don’t need to know where that is. When I’m on tour, I’ll get my pilot to fly my private jet where I need to go.”
