Strange Mix Of WD's: DJ, Romo And Beef

Three tours, three famous golfers, all teed off and each stopped mid-round for reasons both normal and abnormal.

Most alarming with a major championship looming and having recently recorded a win at the Travelers was Dustin Johnson, who posted 78, talked about his round at the 3M and never mentioned a bad back that was cited for his WD.

From Brian Wacker at GolfDigest.com:

Johnson made no reference to his back in the post-round interview before pulling out of the tournament 30 minutes later.

What it means for him moving forward remains to be seen. Johnson has twice won at TPC Southwind, site of next week’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, and the 2019-’20 season’s first and only major, the PGA Championship, is the following week. Though it’s unlikely he will miss any time.

“He absolutely plans to play,” Johnson’s agent, David Winkle, told Golf Digest in a text message. “He was experiencing some tightness in his back, which requires rest and treatment, both of which he’ll get the next few days."

Johnson missed the cut at last week’s Memorial Tournament with rounds of 80-80.

Former NFL quarterback Tony Romo was playing in this week’s Price Cutter Charity Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour and played just four holes before withdrawing with more wrist issues. He recently injured his wrist during the American Century Championship July 4th weekend. From Joel Beall’s GolfDigest.com report:

“If I could hold the golf club, I’d still be out there playing,” Romo said. “I just can’t.”

Romo dropped out of the celebrity-driven American Century Championship two weeks ago with the same injury. Getting a field invite through sponsor exemption, Romo said he was still able to hit his driver “80 to 90 percent” early in the week with the ailment.

The most surprising came in Europe where Andrew “Beef” Johnston played nine holes of the Betfred British Masters that started Wednesday before his WD. According to John Huggan’s report, Johnston was struggling with hotel “lockdown” life and after nine around Close House, before deciding he wasn’t ready to be playing golf.

“I’ve been on-off saying I’m going to play, I’m not going to play, for months,” Johnston said. “I kept changing my mind. But being here and being confined to the hotel, confined to the course and not being able to bring my family is ultimately not what I want and not how I want to live my life. We like to travel as a family, and it’s just been very difficult to get my head around being stuck in those two places and then coming out and trying to compete. It just doesn’t feel right. I tried to come up here, but I was leaving it later and later. I came up Tuesday morning to try to be away as small a time as possible, but it’s not good prep for a tournament and it shows I don’t really want to be here.”