John K., sorry, I"m not buying that. I sat about 5 ft from that bunker for about 8-10 groups coming through on Thurs. Some of the drives caused us to get ready to scramble out of the way and landed right at our feet in the intermediate rough. The crowds were not at all so great that not more than about 10-12 people were in that area Thurs, and none of them were standing in any of those obvious bunkers near that location. The players had practice rounds all week there, and by Sunday, also passed that spot of bunkers, where no crowds were obscuring their obvious presents 3 competition days. I would go so far as to wonder when Nance and Feherty knew right away that DJ had 233 left to the pin, that the yardage books have a specific yardage from that bunker. When you look at DJs preshot getting ready to hit, you see a Marshall sitting on that bunker lip, not 8ft from his ball, then stand to hold up her hand to call for quiet when he hit. That hairy lip rolled fescue grass is on a lip about 18inches high like a chair where the Marshall sat and continues for the entire high side of the bunker. IMO she allowed the crowd to be too close and in the line of DJs line of extracaton from that spot, including herself. That bunker is not more than 50-60ft (15-20 yards) from the edge of the FW, not 70 yards off line. As DJ walked to the ball, Nance already called it a bunker, while they were just begining to clear the crowd. IMHO, this was a mental lapse by DJ and his caddie. The caddie should have already been talking about the bunker nature of where he hit it, before they even reached the ball. The Marshalls-PGA staff did a poor job of placing the rope line, allowing the crowd to come down 10 more ft into the hill on the last day to watch play and thus to obscure the visual of the bunker by that crowd. And, they surely should have not allowed play to procede without clearing another 20 or so people from within or on the high lip of that bunker, before Johnson got ready to play.
And, it was not a sandy-dirt area. It was a sand bunker, plain and simple. I know, I saw it in its untrampled glory up close and personal Thurs, and even the close-ups available now on U-Tube and elsewhere clearly show bunker sand, not dirt., only with a few sneaker prints and such, as the written admonsihment given to the players were told to expect in such areas.
To recap: the drive was not 70 yards wide right, maybe 20. The bunker was unquestionably visable all week. The yardage books and graphics all show it (even Google and Bing do) They had exact yardage from it, and the lip was clearly visable to DJ where the marshal was not more than 8 ft within his line of sight to the green. I've seen muni bunkers in far worse shape!
