Strange as it sounds, the most significant improvement to Lincoln Johnson's golf game can be traced to the snows of April.
The Chaska senior has been on an incredible under-par run in recent weeks. He shot par or better in five consecutive meets, beginning with a 4-under 67 in a meet at Columbia Golf Course on May 7. Smack-dab in the middle of that streak was a personal-best 65 at the Chaska Town Course, a 7-under-par gem punctuated by a Jordan Spieth-like six-birdie run on his final nine holes.
"This last week has gone pretty well," Johnson said understatedly. "My game is peaking."
The notion that a player would be at the top of his game after less than a month of actual play — thank you, Mother Nature — makes little sense on the surface. But Johnson didn't waste time waiting for winter to end. He was working on his game, both physically and mentally.
He hit countless balls with his coach in the indoor practice area at Hazeltine Golf Club, making a tweak here, an adjustment there.
And he viewed winter's lingering remains not through a lens of frustration as others did, but rather as an opportunity to strengthen his mental game.
"Everybody in the state was going through the same thing," Johnson said. "My coach always talks to me about being patient and letting golf come to you. So I stayed patient."
Consider it mental conditioning. In a sport where stray, unfocused thoughts often find their way to the club face, Johnson emerged from golf hibernation composed and collected.
