Butch Harmon on Dustin Johnson's US Open hopes and Tiger Woods' missed cut
Saturday 16 June 2018 16:04, UK
Butch Harmon discusses Dustin Johnson’s impressive start to the US Open and explains why Tiger Woods can take positives from his early exit at Shinnecock Hills.
DJ is doing exactly what you need to do in a US Open. You're going to miss so many greens because the course is set up so hard, but he has done a great job of making five and six-foot putts for par.
His attention has been up a little more in the build-up to this week. He didn't need to change anything, but he worked on cleaning up a couple of things that were just getting a little sloppy.
He is playing tremendous golf right now and absolutely loves the golf course. Around three-quarters of the drives here are left-to-right, which is stock shot, so when he came to practice here he knew the look was perfect for him.
The warm-up ahead of his second round was really good and he felt he was going to go out and shoot a good score. He had to go out and deliver, which he was able to do.
Over the past two days he has been playing very smart and taking his lumps when out of position, rather than trying to do anything spectacular and risk getting into further trouble.
He's a very unique individual in the sense that nothing seems to bother him. He knows he only has control of the shot he is hitting and any shot that he has already hit he doesn't even think about. He just moves on and goes with it, which is a great trait to have.
DJ won't be trying to do anything different over the weekend to what he has done so far, which is to keep hitting fairways and getting it on the greens. The rest of the field are going to have to step up to keep up with him.
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Early exit
Tiger Woods played a lot better than I thought he would, especially off the tee. I know he missed the cut, but he drove the ball better than he has done all year.
It was the short game that let Tiger down, with his pitching not very good and his putting way off what we know it can be. He was actually pretty good, although his scoring didn't reflect that.
He produced some good-quality golf and I think if he is being realistic, he can take a lot out of that going into the Open Championship at Carnoustie next month.
Watch the US Open throughout the weekend live on Sky Sports. Live coverage continues on Saturday from 4.30pm live on Sky Sports US Open.
