This could just be beginning for upstart Johnson

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Four years ago he was in the minors of golf, the Nationwide Tour. Now Zach Johnson has a major. Now Johnson, who said he only had a dream, has a green coat, and the Masters has a champion no one would have dared believe.

Zach Johnson has come a long ways in his golf career to earn the Green Jacket. (Getty Images)

It's not that the 31-year-old isn't deserving. You play four rounds on that beast of a beauty at Augusta National, in fewer strokes than anyone else, you're worthy. You're plenty worthy.

But we've come to expect that the Masters belongs to people named Tiger, Phil and Vijay, that it was pretty much a closed club because of the pressures inherent and prestige involved.

That a kid who's been on the PGA Tour only three-plus years and missed the cut in seven of the 11 previous majors for which he qualified could be standing here, with the tournament that slipped through the hands of Tiger and Retief Goosen and Stuart Appleby, is, as Johnson himself said, "surreal."

He's a humble, small-town Iowan from the same high school as Kurt Warner, which can now count its graduates as a Masters champ and a Super Bowl MVP. He's also religious. But Zach Johnson is not without a sense of satisfaction.

"It makes it much more gratifying," Johnson allowed, "to know I did beat Tiger Woods."

Whether he beat Augusta National is a matter of conjecture. On Sunday, when the weather warmed, the greens were watered and the winds eased, Johnson came home with a 3-under-par 69, as did two of the three players who tied for second, Rory Sabbatini and Goosen.

But the winning 72-hole total of 289 was 1-over par. Not for 51 years, when Jackie Burke also shot 289 to edge Ken Venturi, then an amateur, had par not been equaled or bettered.

Surreal. But not unusual. While the Masters was known as the turf of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player -- and now for the victories by Tiger and Phil Mickelson -- there was a stretch from the late 1960s into the early 1970s that was full of surprises.

Gay Brewer won it in 1967, Bob Goalby in '68, George Archer in '69, Billy Casper in '70 and Charles Coody in '71. How could that happen, was the basic question. It could happen because those guys beat the favorites.

Form holds, but not all the time. Just because you have your own line of clothing or do commercials for an auto company doesn't mean you're guaranteed to finish first.

Maybe this is the one and only for Zach Johnson, as that 1955 U.S. Open was for another guy from Iowa, Jack Fleck, who beat Ben Hogan in a playoff on San Francisco's Olympic Club. Or maybe it is the first step to a career of greatness.

Johnson is the same age as Tiger, but they followed paths as far apart as, well, California and Iowa.