Johnson sees encouraging signs at John Deere Classic

SILVIS, Ill. – Zach Johnson, always the people’s choice in the Quad Cities, shot a 5-under 66 in the final round of the John Deere Classic at steamy TPC Deere Run on Sunday. That was good enough to get him to 10 under, but not good enough to win.

So it’s gone lately for the 12-time PGA TOUR winner, who hoisted the trophy here in 2012 but whose last victory came at the 2015 Open Championship. At 43 and 140th in the FedExCup, he recently learned he’d fallen out of the top 100 in the world, too. He met with his team earlier this summer to take stock of where he was in his career and figure out where to go from here.

“There's been a lot of frustration for me in the 2019 season,” Johnson said, “because of the work I've put in and not seeing the results.”

As a native of Iowa, Johnson is always especially visible during the week of the Deere. He helps run the tournament and heads up his Kids on Course charity pro-am, which helps the Cedar Rapids community and this year included 19 fellow TOUR pros. Another positive this week was that he shot 69-66 on the weekend after making the cut on the number.

“It’s not where I want it right now,” he said, “but it’s on that trajectory.”

After so much reassessing – taking a hard look at his mental game and making a recent caddie change, to cite two examples – he says it’s now time to start improving. That means making his strengths stronger and shoring up his weaknesses. As usual, he was a paragon of driving accuracy at the Deere, hitting 48 of 56 fairways to rank in the top 10 in that category. He was also handy with his irons, leaving an average proximity to the hole of 27 feet, 7 inches, tops in the field with the leaders still on the course.

Ironically, though, for a guy who made his name with clutch putting, Johnson will finish the Deere ranked near the bottom of those who made the cut in putting. His worst effort was a 32-putt performance Saturday, when he ranked 69th in Strokes Gained: Putting, but he wasn’t that great Thursday or Friday, either. He finally looked more like himself Sunday (27 putts).

“It's been me looking in the mirror,” he said, “and saying, ‘What are you doing? You still know how to play this game, so let's get back to the basics.’ If I'm going to break it down, putting would be the priority at this point, and my practice in that regard has been unbelievable.”

After the Deere, he wasn’t dwelling on his work on the greens but how he’d felt getting there.

“I hit the ball on the middle of the clubface a lot today,” he said Sunday, “so that’s encouraging. … A couple lip-outs, a couple missed reads, but it could have been really low.

“You go to any major, specifically (The Open Championship), good things can happen.”

Johnson is not ready to say his best days are behind him. In fact, he said, the opposite is true. He feels like he’s better than he was when he was 25. He likes what he’s done with his coaches from a technical and mental standpoint, and is ready to start seeing some more low scores.

“I've never really had my back up against the wall,” he said, “but every time I've kind of been in a position where I've had to step up, at some point it's happened, and I don't know why that won't happen again.”