Pressure just too much for Pebble-dashed Johnson

DUSTIN JOHNSON insisted he could handle the pressure.

Three painful holes over one cringe-inducing hour at the US Open on Sunday proved he couldn’t. Instead of backing up on his youthful confidence, Johnson added his name to a long, inglorious list of final-round collapses with one of golf’s biggest prizes on the line.

Johnson walked onto Pebble Beach with a three-shot lead, hoping to win his first major. Before he’d reached the fifth hole, he’d made triple-bogey, double-bogey and bogey – a disaster of a start that made him an afterthought while the other man in his twosome, Graeme McDowell, walked away with the trophy.