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Instead, Johnson fired a cool 72-71.
"He said to me after the round, 'I started making some putts and everything fell into place,'" Bermel says. "He was just never afraid."
Johnson will have you believe he's just a normal guy from Cedar Rapids. On an overcast January morning at Heathrow Country Club, north of Orlando, minutes from where he lives with his wife Kim and their toddler son, Will, the Masters champion is seated at a corner table in the men's card room looking, well, positively normal in an untucked golf shirt, black gym shorts and running shoes. His dark, thinning hair is disheveled. When he smiles large dimples pock his cheeks.
"Why am I normal?" he says, shifting in his chair. "I'm down-to-earth, family-oriented." His voice trails off. He tries again. "I am normal because I wasn't the No. 1 player on my high school team, I wasn't the No. 1 player on my college team. I wasn't an All-American. I was decent, pretty average, and average sometimes is normal. Actually, average sometimes can be a good thing."
What Johnson means is that "he had to work to keep getting better," says Mo Pickens, Johnson's sports psychologist. "And, in general, players who have to work to get better, who don't have everything given to them, they keep that work ethic."
Work ethic aside, Johnson's old pal Brian Rupp was stunned when Johnson told him that he wanted to pursue pro golf after college. (Johnson's parents were flat-out upset.) Rupp was the No. 1 golfer at the University of Iowa at the time and felt Johnson was hardly PGA Tour material. "There were guys out there I knew or played against who I would have expected to make it before Zach," Rupp says. "But I could see how passionate he was."
The long odds didn't worry Johnson, but the living and travel expenses of playing the mini-tours did. To focus squarely on his game, he needed help.
That's when a group of Elmcrest members — today known as the "Zach Pack" — funded a win-win arrangement for Johnson.
"None of us were in this to make money," says Flip Klinger, an attorney and one of the original nine sponsors, who are like a posse of your favorite uncles. "It was, 'Let the kid follow his dream.'"
Johnson "sold" shares of himself for $500 (the partnership offered little upside for the sponsors) and from 1998 to 2003 the group committed $150,000, relieving Johnson of any major financial stress.
Johnson, at 22, launched his pro career on the now-defunct Prairie Golf Tour, which held tournaments in places like Winfield, Kan. He won once in his rookie year, and finished sixth on the money list, netting a whopping $7,014.
He won twice more the next season, but took a bath when he upgraded to the Nationwide Tour in 2000. He finished 174th on the money list and packed his bags for the Hooters Tour.
"That was actually a good year," Johnson says. "I learned what I needed to do to get better."
