LAST WORD ON THE DUSTIN JOHNSON AFFAIR

No drama at Whistling Straits if US

PGA had had out-of-bounds stakes

in place

FROM THE GOLFWEEK WEBSITE
By James Achenbach.
All I did was state what seemed obvious to me: Dustin Johnson was robbed at the US PGA Championship, and it shouldn’t have happened.
The response was staggering: hundreds of E-mail comments, a handful of phone calls, even three radio talk shows wanting to discuss the incident.
Most of the commentary was pro-Dustin Johnson. However, some wasn’t.
In today’s electronic society, I get to know some Golfweek readers by their E-mail names and not their real names.

So it was that Jimmyteeball, a golf professional, hit me with a 200-mph E-mail tee shot:

“James, give me a break. Dustin Johnson is leading a major championship and he hits the ball 10 rows up in the stands (figuratively) ... You and everyone else act like he was in the middle of the fairway. The reason the fans were in the bunker was that they were not supposed to be in play.
"Isn’t this guy supposed to be one of the best players in the world? The PGA needs to put up white (out of bounds) stakes and save us all the drama.”
My response: I suppose you would take the 1979 British Open title from Seve Ballesteros because he drove his ball some 50 yards offline into a car park and underneath the front bumper of a small British automobile. If I had a dollar from every wild tee shot under pressure in a major championship, I would host an all-night party.

Golfers play the golf course as defined. In the case of Dustin Johnson, that bunker on the final hole at Whistling Straits was not well-defined.

As Johnson stated on 97.5 The Fanatic, a sports-savvy radio station in Philadelphia: “There was all kinds of grass in it. Obviously people had been walking in it. What it looked like, to me, was just a bare spot. It’s real sandy out there when you get off the fairway no matter where you are. It just looked like a bare spot where people had worn it down from the crowd walking on it. "There was no definition to it at all. Every sand trap on that whole course, you can tell it’s a sand trap because it has a distinct definition and outline in it. Even going back and looking on the TV, there’s really no definition to it, so I just never thought it was a bunker.”
I remember the short speech I scribbled on a piece of paper in April before the Masters awarded me a Major Achievement Award (in all honesty, this was based on the longevity of covering 40 Masters and not on the merit of my stories):
“All my life, people have told me I am too serious,” I wrote. “That’s fine with me. When I first covered the Masters in 1971, I knew right away this was my kind of tournament. It was serious. I loved the history, the traditions, the green jackets, the ceremony, the formal atmosphere. This was serious golf back then, and it remains serious golf today.”
So let’s get serious about the US PGA Championship, which probably would benefit from being more highly structured like the Masters.
Just as businessman and golf lover Herb Kohler has the resources and influence to attract (please note I did not use the verb buy) three US PGA Championships and a Ryder Cup, we should assume that other individuals and other courses will expose their eccentricities to the world of golf.
Already the U.S. Open has been scheduled for two new locations, Chambers Bay (south of Seattle) in 2015 and Erin Hills (northwest of Milwaukee) in 2017.
Kohler and architect Pete Dye constructed nearly 1,000 bunkers at Whistling Straits. The Dustin Johnson sand pit was trampled by spectators who walked and ran through it during the tournament. There were unconfirmed reports that children had been building sand castles. There were no rakes in this so-called bunker.
So what can we learn from DJ-gate?
Get serious. Golf as usual is not enough in a major championship. This is one of the four most important golf tournaments on the planet, so let’s treat it as such.

Double or triple the pool of rules officials. Add reinforcements for the leading groups on Saturday and Sunday.

Undefined sandy areas outside the spectator ropes should be classified as waste areas, not bunkers. With such a designation in place, Dustin Johnson would have been able to ground his club. It’s not like he would be granted relief – it still would have been a daunting shot.
Rules officials should become proactive, warning players about unusual situations and possible infractions.
Why didn’t rules official David Price, walking down the 72nd hole with the player leading the US PGA Championship, say something about the bunker? Because, even though Price later said HE clearly recognised it as a bunker, rules officials don’t customarily assert themselves in such a manner.
Well, it’s time to change. Sprawling modern golf course design and the frenzied emphasis on major championships demand that we devise new methods of dealing with the applications of the rules.
When Dustin Johnson was asked why Price didn’t say anything, he valiantly assumed responsibility for the mistake.
“I was wondering that myself,” Johnson admitted. “But, it’s not up to them, it’s up to me. Obviously I never once thought I was in a bunker. I know the rules of golf very well and I know that I can’t ground my club in a bunker. But it never even crossed my mind that I was in a bunker. But that’s how it goes. I made a mistake.”

With better planning, we might be able to avoid such mistakes in the future.