Johnson takes home his 23rd PGA Tour victory

The 2020 PGA Tour Championship took place this past weekend at the beautiful East Lake Gulf Club in Atlanta, GA. This was the final tournament of 2020 FedEx Cup playoffs and 2019-2020 PGA season, and taking home the prize was Dustin Johnson.

Johnson won it at -21 after some closely (and not closely contested) four rounds. New tournament rules saw Johnson start 10 below par, the best advantage of any golfer at East Lake. These advantages were based on where players ranked on the FedEx Cup points list. Other golfers got advantages too. The number two ranked golfer, Jon Rahm, started at -8, number three ranked Justin Thomas started at -7 and number four Webb Simpson started at -6. This applied for all 30 players in the tournament, but no one started above par.

Jon Rahm would be the one giving Johnson troubles after round 1 of the tournament. They were tied after the round at -13. This meant Johnson shot a respectable -3, but Rahm balled out with a -5. This back and forth battle was nothing new since the two have been exchanging blows for the past couple of months. 

In the second round Rahm fell off with a +4 on the day leaving him at -9. Johnson would hold his lead firm though hitting even par with 70 strokes. Taking Rahm’s place in contention was Sungjae Im and Xander Schauffele. They shot -6 and -5 in round two respectively putting Im at -12, and Schauffele at -11 for the tournament. The six under from Im was the low of the day.

Round three proved to be Johnson’s biggest. Three birdies on each nine that day helped Johnson score a 65, that was 5 under par and gave him a commanding 19 for the tournament. Im and Schauffele were still the two best contenders against Johnson after round 3, but they were even left in the dust. Bothe finished the round at -14, 5 strokes behind Johnson.

Going into the forth and final round, Johnson told NBC, “This is a difficult golf course so no lead is really safe.” However, this didn’t prove to matter because after finishing -2 on the day, Johnson won handsomely.

Im and Schauffele tied for second place with -18, that’s three strokes back from Johnson. Just behind them at -17 was a disappointed Rahm who couldn’t win this battle against Johnson.

Johnson is going to be taking home a nice sum for $15 million for his win. In addition, he’s now number 1 on betting odds to win the U.S. Open starting on Sept. 17th. 

Despite the success, Johnson finished fifth for PGA Player of the Year. This title was handed to the aforementioned Justin Thomas.