PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Some 40 hours after hitting his last shot of the tournament, Dustin Johnson won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on Monday, when rain washed out the final round for the second consecutive day.
Pebble Beach received nearly 1 1/2 inches of rain, enough to create a tiny river in one fairway and produce puddles on most of the greens. It was the first rain-shortened tournament on the PGA Tour in nearly three years, and the first 54-hole event at Pebble Beach since the late Payne Stewart also hit the winning shot on Saturday in 1999.
And it was historic for at least one reason.
“I’ve never won a tournament in tennis shoes,” said Johnson, who came to the course to collect his trophy, thank the rain-soaked volunteers and grasp the timing of his great week, even if he only got in three rounds.
The victory was the second in his last nine starts, and it puts him in the conversation with a growing cast of rising stars. The 24-year-old Johnson joins Anthony Kim as the only players under 25 with multiple PGA Tour victories.
He moved up to No. 45 in the world, putting him into the 64-man field at the Accenture Match Play Championship next week. More important — at least for a guy who grew up less than an hour away from Augusta National — it earned Johnson a trip to the Masters.
Johnson finished at 15-under-par 201 and earned $1.098 million. The winning round came at Poppy Hills on Saturday, when Johnson overpowered the five par 5s with birdies on all of them — he had three eagle attempts — and shot a 67. That gave him a four-shot lead over Mike Weir, who would have been playing in the final group at Pebble for the second time in four years.
