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The Loop

Dustin Johnson and his caddie spent the entire off-season studying golf's new rules (Kidding!)

January 03, 2019
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JOHANNES EISELE

As golf fans are well aware, Dustin Johnson has had two of the more famous rules run-ins in recent golf history. There was the accidental grounding of his club in a waste bunker that cost him the 2010 PGA Championship and the accidental micro-moving of his golf ball that nearly cost him the 2016 U.S. Open. So with a major revision of golf's rules taking effect at the start of this year, it made sense that the former World No. 1 was asked if he's stayed abreast of the changes. And — perhaps, not surprisingly — it doesn't sound like he has.

Here's an exchange Johnson had at his Wednesday press conference ahead of this week's Sentry Tournament of Champions, where DJ is the defending champ:

Q. I know you joked about it there at the start but have you paid any attention to the rules changes or how much effort have you put into looking at what the changes will be?
DUSTIN JOHNSON: I actually just looked at it for like a minute upstairs before I came down. They've got a big poster in the locker room. Yeah.

Here's the poster to which Johnson is referring:

The follow-up question asked Johnson about his brother and caddie, Austin:

Q. Austin? Has he had instruction --
DUSTIN JOHNSON: I had one of the TOUR officials do a printout that I'm going to give to him to study later on today.

Q. How is that going to go? DUSTIN JOHNSON: Probably not very well.
(Laughter.)
But I'm going to have to look at it a little bit.

To be fair to the Johnson brothers, they had a wedding to deal with this off-season. Still, you'd expect one of the game's best players to do more than "look at it a little bit" when it comes to the new rules. Especially, when that player has such an eventful history when it comes to the game's rules.

In any event, Johnson begins his title defense at Kapalua's Plantation Course at 12:40 local time on Thursday. And in Bryson DeChambeau he's at least got the perfect playing partner if he has any questions.