“I think I played really solid”, Johnson told NBC after beating Casey by three at the BMW Championship at Crooked Stick.
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Dustin Johnson may well have wrapped up PGA Tour Player of the Year honors on Sunday, winning the BMW Championship by three shots over Paul Casey for his third win of the season.
The world No. 1 will have a week to rest his injury, as the Tour Championship, the last of the four FedEx Cup playoff events, does not start until September 22 at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
This victory follows Johnson’s breakthrough major win at the US Open and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, which places him alongside World No.1 Jason Day for the most wins on the PGA Tour this season.
Johnson, using a putter he put in the bag this week, launched his finishing flourish with a 10-foot birdie at the 14th.
The 30-man Tour Championship, which carries a $10m (£7.54m) prize for the victor, is in Atlanta on 22-25 September.
The timing is particularly bad for Fowler because Davis Love III makes three of his captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup on Monday, with another one right after the Tour Championship.
But he remains the No. 1 player in the world, albeit under threat from world No. 2 Dustin Johnson. Day has a long history of battling both injury and illness, and his agent indicated that the Aussie is now dealing with a pinched joint capsule in his lower back that is causing muscle spasms.
Johnson has left his mark on this season in the exact way nearly every Player of the Year victor has – a major victor (for the first time), WGC victor and FedEx Cup Playoff victor in the third event of the playoffs.
Fowler wasn’t the only player to drop out of the top 30.
The 10-time PGA tour victor and defending champion at the event has a history of back issues, withdrawing from the BMW Championship in 2014 with a similar complaint.
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The pair moved all-square when Johnson found sand off the third tee and saw his par-save lip-out, as Casey rolled in from eight feet for a second successive birdie. “Couple of my best weeks have come on really long golf courses”. “My gut is that he’ll be fine”, Martin said. “But the most important thing is the next 15 years, not the next 15 days”. It’s also the second time that the Englishman has finished runner-up to Johnson at this event, dating to the 2010 edition at Cog Hill G&CC.
