The 45-year-old delivered. Johnson burst out of the gate with four birdies in his first ten holes on Thursday and played steady enough golf the rest of the way to easily make the cut at 4-under. A 69-71 effort on the weekend left him with a solid, if not spectacular, T37 effort that gives him at least a fighting chance to enter more fields as the summer wears on.
"I should be getting in more after the shuffle before BMW in a few weeks," KJ said. "Hopefully get on a roll after that."
As the Tour periodically reshuffles players based on season earnings, conditionally exempt players such as KJ know the importance of making cuts when they have the opportunity. Without cashing a paycheck, a player has no spot on the reshuffle. This is the problem Jeff Brehaut ran into last year when his reshuffle number was never high enough for him to enter a field - he made the cut on a sponsor exemption in Wichita, but finished T51 and the June event occurred too late in the year for Brehaut's earnings to help him out too much.
As KJ told me, the next reshuffle will occur before the BMW Charity Pro-Am in South Carolina in mid-May, with this week's WNB Classic along with two Georgia events standing in the way. A top-25 finish in Brazil would have granted KJ automatic entry into the WNB, and he began the final round a shot behind at T26, but he never really generated momentum in a final-round 71 that pushed him 11 spots back.
With a large field spread across three courses, KJ has a fighting chance to gain entry into the BMW, but nothing is for certain. All he knows is that he needs to take advantage of playing opportunities when he has them: make cuts, get top-25's if possible, and know that every shot (and every accompanying dollar) is important.
At the very least, his $3,179 paycheck in Brazil puts him in the conversation.
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