Dustin Johnson looks set to return to golf in the new year, just months after the LIV Golf superstar player suffered a freak bedroom injury with wife Paulina Gretzky.
The 40-year-old sustained the back issue in May, happily telling reporters: “I just pulled a muscle in my lower back.” When asked if this was from swinging a club, or picking up one of the two children he has with Gretzky, he said: “Lifting up a kid, just … a bigger kid.”
Johnson has a history with back injuries, withdrawing from The Masters in 2012 after straining his back. Five years later, he again withdrew from the same tournament after tripping down the stairs at a rental property in Augusta.
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Johnson, notably, was one of the first significant players to leave the PGA Tour in favor of LIV Golf, the polarizing, Saudi-backed, upstart league. He’s even been on record before, during the wildly popular “Full Swing” series on Netflix, saying that one of the reasons to join LIV was to earn more money while playing less golf.
It’s “pretty simple,” he said on the show. “Someone offers anyone a job, doing the same thing they’re already doing but less time at the office and they’re gonna pay them more. Pretty sure you’re gonna take it. And something’s wrong with you if you didn’t.”
This is a notable difference between himself and other LIV stars like Bryson DeChambeau, who are using the additional free time from the off-season to compete in various events on the Asian Tour — specifically, a landmark event in India, in which he could compete alongside, and against, his Crushers teammates at LIV.
Johnson’s wife Paulina Gretzky is in Saint-Tropez with friends (
Getty)
With Johnson absent from the DP World Tour or Asian Tour events, it means his return to pro golf will not likely take place until the LIV Golf calendar restarts in 2025. In a new addition to the schedule, the season kicks off on February 6-8 in Riyadh, before later events in Adelaide on February 14-16, Hong Kong from March 7-9, and Singapore from March 14-16.
There are typically 14 events in a LIV Golf league season, and though it has only been running since 2022, it has already yielded some interesting storylines.
Johnson, for instance, generated a lot of prize money in the first season when he took approximately $35 million to the bank. Brooks Koepka has the most tournament wins in LIV with five, and DeChambeau made the whole sports world sit up and take notice when he carded an incredible 58 in 2023 at Greenbrier and called it “the greatest moment in my golf career.”
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