An Idiots Committee
Bunker of arrogance: Absurd Dustin Johnson ruling at PGA Championship a fittingepitaph to golf's season of woe
Dustin Johnson was robbed by an absurd bunker ruling.
With its arrogant devotion to the letter of every rule, golf has lost its way.
Whistling Straits has bunkers you cannot even see — but only imagine.
Dustin Johnson stood on a beaten-down, dirty patch of ground that was as much of a bunker as a cat is a dog. What little sand there was the type you'd find on the edges of the worn-out grass of a playground, not one of golf's pristine championship courses.
No one in any state of mind would look at Johnson's position and think he's in a bunker. It's more of a stretch than suggesting that Pauly Shore is still relevant.
Yet, because the local rules for the Whistling Straits golf course where the PGA Championship was contested — rules that apparently weren't designed with any consideration for a day that thousands and thousands of fans would be swarming Herb Kohler's playground — this "bunker" cost Johnson a spot in a three-hole playoff.
Golf's arrogant fuddy duddies can rip Johnson all they want for not reading the Supplementary Rules of Play notice posted in the Whistling Straits locker room — and not remembering it when he's on the 72nd hole of a major, in the most pressure-packed situation of his golfing life — all they want.
The bottom line is that golf once again erred on the side of arrogance when PGA rules guru Mark Wilson chose to penalize Johnson by the exact minute detail of the rule rather than grasp that Johnson had gained absolutely no advantage for grounding his club in a "bunker." Common sense should have prevailed.
Instead, Wilson looked more overwhelmed than any of the players with their legacy on the line. You couldn't have scripted a more haired, clueless bureaucrat if you pulled Ferris Bueller's principal back out of the 1980s.
Johnson should have been allowed to continue onto into the playoff. He'd earned that.
Instead, Johnson got the punishment he didn't deserve — a two-stroke penalty that dropped him all the way into a tie for fifth, behind even a disappointing Rory McIlroy. The only justice is that golf also receives the rap it truly deserves.
Thanks to Wilson, no one is talking about who actually won the PGA — Martin Kaymer. Instead, a playoff for a major is at best the forgotten side story. In many ways, that's fitting for a golf season with woes that go far beyond Tiger Woods' troubles.
Even before we were given the "bunker" that fans walked over all week, the "bunker" with as much sand as straw, the "bunker" of absurdity, golf had lost its way. It turns out that Tiger was never even close to one of the most arrogant people in this game.
