A needle, a penalty, a cut

AUGUSTA, Ga. - 'Discombobulated” would describe Zach Johnson's 2014 Masters.

So would 'short.”

The Cedar Rapids native took a needle late Thursday afternoon. Early Friday evening, he missed a cut.

If there were any consolation on Johnson missing the 36-hole cut in Augusta National's illustrious golf tournament, it's that he did so by two strokes rather than one. Had it been one, the margin of error would have been a one-shot penalty he received on the sixth hole when his ball moved on the green after he addressed it with his putter.

Johnson blew the whistle on himself as he faced a putt that was little more than one foot from the hole for a par.

'I'm just looking down at the ball marks,” Johnson said. 'I put my putter down and the next thing I know I hit my ball.”

So things came to a halt at the green for at least 10 minutes. Johnson asked playing partners Steve Stricker and K.J. Choi and their caddies if they saw what happened. They didn't. He asked CBS' camera-operators in the two television towers behind the green if they saw it. Nope.

'Did anybody see it?” Johnson asked in mock exasperation to the spectators at the green, drawing laughs, but no answers.

The PGA's explanation:

'Johnson notified PGA of America rules committee of his concern regarding the movement of the ball. Video review by officials was inconclusive. However, Johnson was convinced that the ball moved.

'Under the rules, when a ball moves after address, it must be replaced, unless the movement of the ball occurs after the player has begun the stroke, or the backward movement of the club for the stroke, and the stroke is made. In this situation, since the movement of the ball took place after Johnson had begun the stroke, he was not required to replace the ball, but was not exempt from the one-stroke penalty provided for under the rule.”

'Tiger (Woods) wouldn't have asked,” said one of the spectators.

But as Johnson said, 'Someone calls it in, the next thing you know it's on television. Now I'm looking like, you know, like I cheated.”

The penalty put Johnson at 7-over par in the tournament. He needed to get to 4-over, as it turned out, to make the cut and play through the weekend. He only got to 6-over with his even-par 72 on the heels of his first-round 78.

He muddled through that 78 with a pollen-induced head cold. Six minutes into his post-round interview with reporters Thursday, Johnson asked if he could sit down. Shortly afterward, he entered the Augusta National clubhouse, where he said a medic told him 'Dude, you gotta do something.”

'Next thing you know, I've got two green jackets and these two doctors and another volunteer doctor. ... I was at an EMT in downtown Augusta in probably 25 minutes.

He got a shot, 10 milligrams of a steroid called Decadron. He said he took about a 10-inch needle in his backside.

'I hate needles,” Johnson said. 'I turned the other cheek, if you will.”

But while he made a nice physical recovery after getting the shot, and played significantly better Friday, it wasn't enough. It was his first missed-cut in his last 20 PGA Tour-sanctioned events, the last being the U.S. Open in June 2013.

'Really upset about the missed cut,” said Johnson, the world's 10th-ranked player. 'My goal is to go every year (without one). Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Time to start a new streak.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@sourcemedia.net