Robert TheodorsonVintage DJ was in full force Friday morning, blowing through the competition and setting a high bar for the weekend.
The beautiful Sentosa Golf Club on Sentosa Island, Singapore hosted LIV for the third straight year, and after Friday morning’s results – 2025 will make its case for the best iteration yet.
And the beautiful oceanside course proved to separate the field into two halves: those who could overcome mistakes, score, and stay in competition, and those who may have taken themselves out of tournament already due to extremely costly mistakes.
The ability to hit the ball as hard and as straight as possible proved to be the difference at Sentosa as several holes featured long Par 5s and what every amateur golfer would consider extremely long Par 4s.
Those who were able to produce accuracy behind pure power were rewarded while those who couldn’t keep their game under control were brutally punished.
Let’s take a look at Dustin Johnson’s masterclass performance and how the field figures to go into Saturday and Sunday.
DJ’s Perfect Day One
A week ago in Hong Kong, the 40-year-old Johnson woke up prior to the first round with a sore right shoulder that limited his range of motion.
He shot rounds of 75 and 72 to drop to last place after the first two days.
“I couldn’t turn my head to the right,” Johnson explained. “I kind of just pulled when I was on the through swing, so I was hitting everything left. It wasn’t a whole lot of fun.”
He received treatment between rounds and his body finally responded prior to Sunday’s final round.
He shot a 6-under 64, tying for the third best score of the day, but the leaderboard damage had been done, as he finished last for the first time at a LIV Golf tournament.
Feeling good about his game entering last week, Johnson said it was easy to dismiss the first two rounds and the final result because of the injury.
“Swung it really nicely on Sunday,” he said. “Obviously, the body loosened back up and I could hit the shots that I wanted.”
Johnson’s 63 set a high bar for the weekend and put the field on notice that one of LIV’s premier golfers came not just to finally compete again, but win.
The much-maligned Johnson hasn’t had a decent performance since LIV Las Vegas in 2024, his only win of the season.
It appears that the news of Johnson and his 4 Aces downfall has been extremely exaggerated as DJ and his team head into Saturday with commanding leads, though behind a hungry field.
The scoring spree started with a bogie on DJ’s second hole, the Par 5 587-yard 4th hole.
From that moment on Johnson made sure to never let his foot off the gas, scoring another six times making zero impactful errors culminating in a perfect day.
Without a doubt Johnson’s most impressive performance came on the Par 5 563-yard 18th. A long tee shot which ended up in a fairway bunker looked like the end of DJ’s errorless run.
Not only did Johnson escape the bunker with good distance, but landed his approach shot at the back of the 18th where it stuck for a few seconds before rolling back to the left leaving the 4 Aces captain with a relatively easy birdie putt.
Where so many others failed on the 18th, DJ triumphed, using the green’s extreme slopes to his advantage.
It was a hole where many like Phil Mickelson and Louis Oosthuizen were unable to the green properly and had to settle for par.
Singapore Figures to be a Tight Race
With not much separation between the Top 25 (7-under to 1-under) Saturday and Sunday figure to be a tight race down to the wire both on the individual and team leaderboards.
While DJ currently has a two-stroke lead going into Saturday a number of his fellow captains including Louis Oosthuizen, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Cam Smith, and Joaquin Niemann breathing down his neck, all tied at 4-under par.
On the team front, DJ’s performance paired with Patrick Reed’s flawless 68 shot the 4 Aces to first on the leaderboard, a position they have not seen all season.
Other than the 8-over par Majesticks and the 10-over par Cleeks, this really could be anyone’s tournament.
The HyFlyers, Stinger, and Fireballs, last week’s podium finishers are all very much in the race and have golfers that could heat up at any moment.
Singapore just feels like one of those tournaments where having a Day One lead is nice, but ultimately you know leads will change hands dozens of times over the course of the next two days.
