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Dustin Johnson is not a mystery. He hits it long, and he hits it straight. The ball flight off his irons should be shown exclusively on HBO and Cinemax and only after midnight on the weekends. His putter and wedge game -- long thought to be a leak in the dam -- has actually swung the other way and become fairly underrated. Maybe his trusty Trackman is the Little Dutch Boy plugging that leak, maybe not. Whatever the case, Dustin Johnson is the defending U.S. Open champion and has evolved into the best golfer on the planet over the last six months. 

The Official World Golf Rankings tell me that -- he leads No. 2 Rory McIlroy by a prodigious margin. The tournament wins (three this season) tell me that. And watching Dustin Johnson hit a golf ball tells me that.

Johnson infamously missed the Masters two months ago after losing a fight with a staircase at his rental home in Augusta, Georgia. But he's 100 percent healthy for major No. 2 of the year as he tries to be the first to successfully defend a U.S. Open since Curtis Strange did it in 1989 at Oak Hill.

D.J., on the surface, does not appear to be built to win U.S. Opens. Nobody has ever confused his PGA Tour card with one from the Mensa Society. He has not traditionally been a mental stalwart on the slippery greens of an Open. And he ranks No. 166 on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy which has not normally equated to winning trophies at the Winged Foots and Shinnecocks of the world.

But I followed D.J. for much of his 72-hole ball-striking seminar last year at Oakmont. The cost per session was $125, albeit free for me, and worth every penny for those who glided four rounds with the most mechanically gifted swinger of the golf club maybe ever. I don't know when it hit me Sunday, but at some point I realized, damn, Dustin Johnson is kind of built to win U.S. Opens.

Because this tournament is so grueling and tense, it more often delivers an elite, sometimes historically great, ball-striker as its champion. The past 10 U.S. Opens have produced the following winners, in order.

  • Angel Cabrera
  • Tiger Woods
  • Lucas Glover
  • Graeme McDowell
  • Rory McIlroy
  • Webb Simpson
  • Justin Rose
  • Martin Kaymer
  • Jordan Spieth
  • Dustin Johnson

Only Spieth and Woods will be remembered on this list as being all-time great putters, and Tiger is probably the best ball-striker ever (and Spieth the most underrated of his generation).

Looking back at Oakmont last year, Johnson was No. 1 in driving distance, T18 in driving accuracy, No. 1 in greens in regulation and T49 in putting. This seems to be the formula for winning a modern U.S. Open. Not all U.S. Opens, mind you, but even in 2015 when Spieth won, he finished T5 in greens hit in regulation and T15 in putting (not bad for a guy who only wins because he putts well). The lesson here is that you must not putt yourself out of the tournament if you want to win, but the real key is hitting 72 of the best approach shots you've ever hit in your life.

With Woods and Phil Mickelson missing out on the same major for the first time since 1994, we will have to look elsewhere for the easy storylines they provide. McIlroy's ongoing quest to join Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones as the only golfers under the age of 30 with five major championships is one of them. Rickie Fowler getting his first is another. Johnson defending this tournament might be the biggest of all, though.

The real question is not, "can he?" but rather, "will he?" Of course he can. Dustin Johnson could win a golf tournament with one of Wayne Gretzky's hockey sticks and the exploding golf ball Paulina makes him use to reveal the gender of their children. Johnson is coming to Erin Hills off a missed cut at the Memorial Tournament in which he could not have putted worse with his eyes closed. Given his past six months -- three wins and eight top 10s in 10 events since January -- I'm going to say the Memorial was a bump in the road.

There are a number of factors falling D.J.'s way, too. It's supposed to rain off and on this year at the tournament like it did last year at Oakmont. Combined with the fact that the USGA is going to make this at or around the longest course in tournament history, and I'm not sure there's anyone more suited to bring the thing to its knees. The first and last holes could play up to a combined 1,300 yards. This could be the tournament Dustin Johnson was created to win.

It looks like a British Open, too. Johnson has pummeled those tracks. He has four top 10s on the other side of the pond in the past seven years. He is, bluntly, better than everyone else from longer distances over extended periods of time. Again, let's not overcomplicate this.

On the other hand, as Kevin Na deftly showed off on Instagram on Sunday, the fescue at Erin Hills is going to be taller than Ian Woosnam, and like I mentioned earlier, D.J. is not exactly the straightest driver of the golf ball.

Since 1991, only five champions have finished better than 15th the year after winning the U.S. Open. The best of these was Tiger Woods in 2009 when he finished T6 and lost by four to Lucas Glover at Bethpage Black. 

Dustin Johnson will be better this time around because Dustin Johnson's golf is straightforward, and this is a tournament that is won with straightforward golf. For all the ribbing D.J. takes for his intelligence, it's fairly ironic that this is his most dangerous trait on a golf course.

Our nation's championship has almost annually been a test of mind and will as much as it has been a test of short game and driver. Normally, golfers have to overcome a frustration with self or Mother Nature or an innate anger at the USGA for laying down such a punishing eight-mile walk. For Johnson, it has never appeared that this is the case. He handled his penalty during the final round of the event last year the same way one would handle hearing their order is ready at a Starbucks. He is never hurried or haggard. He just goes out and hits his ball, and he hits it as well as anyone in history ever has.

So on a week when there will be much talk of overcoming and bending one's will towards a trophy, bet on the guy who forges ahead against mind-numbing hole after mind-numbing hole with the aplomb of a stampeding rhinoceros, devastating everything in its path. Dustin Johnson will win a second straight U.S. Open because he is the most prodigious, enduring ball-striker in the world right now and because of his uncanny ability to shrug off the types of bounces and breaks that normally leave contenders grasping for something to hold on to.

And remember that harmonious barrel fire off of Johnson's clubs as he bends and unfurls his spindly frame into shot after shot at Erin Hills and winds his way around the old farmland. There are no trees on this property so that unforgettable noise will rise into the ether and disappear forever. But not before Johnson raises another U.S. Open trophy and lets the noise wash all the way over him.