Zach Johnson had a lot to take stock of last fall.

Zach Johnson rebuilt his putting and ball striking, staples of his game, with great result: a win in the Valero Texas Open. (Chris Thelen/Staff)

There were the floods that ravaged his home state of Iowa and his hometown of Cedar Rapids.

And there was the deteriorating state of his game that left him on the bench for 75 percent of the FedEx Cup playoffs and watching the Ryder Cup from home.

"There was kind of a Masters lag, for sure," said the 2007 Masters Tournament champion.

With six weeks of forced vacation in the fall, Johnson didn't just mope about his lagging performance. He decided to get a jump on the restoration of his game and the consistency that had him steadily improving throughout his golf career.

"I was going to do it in the off-season, but playing a lot of fall events, I didn't have much of an off-season," he said. "So during that six-week stretch I took a good three weeks off and then spent two weeks really working. I've got four tournaments in the fall to prepare myself for '09. So let's make those changes now and go back to where I was."

With the help of the same support team that upgraded his short game after 2006 and led to his major breakthrough, Johnson rebuilt the staples of his game: putting and ball striking.

The results were immediate. Johnson won his first Fall Series start at the Valero Texas Open in October. Then he backed it up in his second start of 2009 by winning the Sony Open of Hawaii for his fifth career PGA Tour victory.

"Huge!" Johnson said of the lift he got in Texas. "Every win I've had has been a little bit of validation, and they're all big. However, Texas was huge. It got me a win out of Georgia. It told me that I could still compete regardless of what happened that year. It made a sour year more palatable.

"Then Hawaii was just as big, if not bigger."

Maybe some of Johnson's late-season resurgence was good karma. In June, when he was competing in the U.S. Open, a summer of devastating Midwest weather turned significantly worse. Floodwaters gutted Iowa, including downtown Cedar Rapids, where Johnson's parents worked. Parts of the town have been condemned.

Zach Johnson rebuilt his putting and ball striking, staples of his game, with great result: a win in the Valero Texas Open. (Chris Thelen/Staff)

"The town is never going to be the same," Johnson said. "It's horrible. There's $5 billion damage. The government and city councils were not prepared for something like that."

During that same forced sabbatical from the PGA Tour, Johnson went home to assess the damage.

"It took a lot out of me emotionally," he said. "I had a lot of time, and I decided to go back and really meet with the people back there and see what happened. That took a toll on me."

Johnson's 4-year-old charity, Birdies That Care, had selected the Boys and Girls Club of Cedar Rapids as its 2008 beneficiary, but the organization's headquarters were destroyed in the floods and couldn't be reopened.

"We elected to choose them again this year because they didn't have the time to do anything," Johnson said. "They really needed us."

Johnson gathered tour friends Chris DiMarco and Todd Hamilton to join him for a nine-hole charity exhibition with young local golfers in Iowa City. The Disaster Relief Benefit raised a few hundred thousand dollars, but also kept the spotlight on the ongoing needs of the community.

"Awareness was the main goal," Johnson said. "Everything kind of subsided quickly. Right after the floods you had the Texas hurricane, then the slide of the economy, then the election. They just got pushed aside. It's no one's fault. That's just the way it works."

So after rebuilding his game and doing what he can could to help rebuild his hometown, Johnson arrives with renewed enthusiasm. He has moved from Orlando, Fla., to St. Simons Island, Ga., where he honed his short game before his Masters victory.

He acquitted himself well in the glare of his title defense, tying for 20th.With the attention off him this year and his game more on, he's ready to get back.

"My game is more complete," he said. "My putting has kind of come back a little bit. My ball striking has been very consistent. My game is in a lot better shape now than it was a year ago."

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.