True Gift

Don't let his 'aw shucks,' guy-next-door demeanor fool you. Masters champion Zach Johnson is one tough competitor

Although he had six three-putts over four days, Johnson made key putts down the stretch.

By Tim Rosaforte

Photo By Dom Furore

April 13, 2007

Outside the butler cabin sunday night, Dave Johnson's eyes were red from the tears of a long, emotional hug he had just shared with his son. In many ways this was the same boy who grew up on Adirondack Drive in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Zach Johnson always wanted the ball.

"The thing I remember about Zach the most was when he was 3 years old, kicking a football downstairs for hours," said the father of the new Masters champion. "We had a little Nerf basketball game, and he'd shoot that for hours. And those little footballs they used to throw out at college and high school games … I'd have him throw them to me in the garage, and he'd throw perfect spirals."

Inside the cabin Zach Johnson was wearing his green jacket and receiving congratulations from the new Masters chairman, Billy Payne, while his wife, Kim, their 14-week-old son, Will, and family members from Iowa and friends from golf were trying to recover from the shock. Outside, Dave Johnson, a chiropractor who still resides in Iowa, thought back to Zach's high school career.

As a high school junior, Zach stood barely 5-foot-3 and weighed just 110 pounds. He was still scrappy enough to play junior varsity soccer and letter on the Regis High School varsity golf team, though he was never good enough to advance beyond the No. 2 position.

The story goes that he wanted to play golf for Iowa, but the Hawkeye coach took Regis' No. 1 player, and Zach signed with Drake University. He eventually hit "a little growth spurt" as his father called it, but he still only topped out at 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds by his senior year. It never hampered his athletic career. Johnson was known as one of the best three-point shooters in the college's intramural basketball league, and as a forward for the soccer team, he scored enough goals to make the All-Metro team. "He was a scorer," said Dave Johnson. "They liked to say he'd cherry pick. If the ball got loose, he was there to kick it in."

Not unlike the way Zach won the Masters—taking advantage of his opportunities, executing calmly amid all the chaos around him on the final day, as his fellow competitors (including Tiger Woods, who was going for his third straight major) repeatedly missed their targets. Immediately, the new champion was compared to Jack Fleck, the Iowa club pro whose defeat of Ben Hogan in a playoff for the 1955 U.S. Open is considered one of golf's monumental upsets (see page 71). To knowledgeable golf fans, Johnson has more of a pedigree than Fleck did in 1955, but to many in the mainstream sports audience, the reaction was probably "Zach Who?"

The basic facts of Johnson's biography don't do justice to his heart—or his putting stroke. His only PGA Tour victory came as a rookie in the 2004 BellSouth Classic. He made the Ryder Cup team last year and was one of the few bright spots on a United States squad that was steamrolled by the Europeans at the K Club in Ireland. Before that he set records on the Nationwide and Hooters tours, where he became close friends with Vaughn Taylor, the Augusta native, PGA Tour player and fellow Ryder Cup rookie who, perhaps fortuitously for Johnson, ended up as his playing partner (and biggest supporter) for Sunday's final round.

Standing under the tree by the clubhouse when it was over, Taylor remembered their days competing on the minor leagues of golf, playing courses that were, shall we say, a couple of tiers below Augusta National. They shared rooms at Super 8 motels, shelling out their $800 entry fees knowing a top-10 finish probably wouldn't cover their expenses for the week. One year Johnson and Taylor played a Hooters Tour event at the River GC, across the Savannah River from downtown Augusta. "We never talked about playing in the Masters," Taylor recalled. "But we always dreamed about it."