Oh My Lord, if this "grounding club in waste bunker" happens...

[Wayne_Kozun]

See post #31 - signs everywhere - if it's sand it's a bunker.

So if you are in a sand filled divot in the middle of the fairway this is deemed to be a micro-bunker?

[Tony_Chapman]

I think this sums it up for me....

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=5463625&sportCat=golf

[Bill Brightly]

See post #31 - signs everywhere - if it's sand it's a bunker.

So if you are in a sand filled divot in the middle of the fairway this is deemed to be a micro-bunker?

Nah,the rule posted in the locker room said

Bunkesr: all areas of the course design and buit as sand bunkers will be played as hazards, whether or not they have been raked.

[V. Kmetz]

As myself and others have digressed to an entire irresolvable slate of opinions on satellite subjects, I will let everybody else have the last word.  Mine is this:

This is a stupid course conceived for one purpose, to dazzle the stupid who have enough disposable income that they have really had an experience.

This place is a shit show, meant for TV, magazines and blimps - a few of the things that court the stupid with disposable income.  It is not a shit show because Dustin Johnson made a 7 on the 18th hole, while taking 5 swings.  iI is a shit show because even the architect doesn't know how many bunkers are present.

Somebody said something about personal responsibility in reference to Johnson - how about Dye to absolutely flout the essence of "designing soemthing" by giving every element (and the cost it takes to create) the greatest attention humanly possible.

On another thread, Dye is reported to have said "He shouldn't have hit it up there."  How the fuck would he know; he doesn't even know how many bunkers are there?  Why not just make it an internal OB Pete?  He shouldn't hit  it up there in that case either, right?  what's the difference, you decided that whiel you can't number the bunkers out there, this particular one was cleverly palced just to allow for this contingency.  Shaddup.

So, Mike Malone said it best - if this over-blown piece of "Spend the Faucet maker's inexhaustible treasury" requires - in its overblowness - such notoriously altered rules of competition and in the absolute cauldron of competition, where focus is on anything but the yellow paper on the mirror of the locker room - a competitor with every advantage of committee stewardship still runs afoul of the altered rule - the damn competition should not be held there.

If a particular unnatural risk of penalty is introduced by the venue - the committee must ratchet up it's assistance to the competitors in a similarly unnatural way...not allowing crowds inside these "bunkers," instructing pairings officials to be on the look-out and chirp up for this exact situation.

Locker room postings in yellow and green, are just flyers - that was insufficient to the ambiguous nature of these areas, moreso in the stress of final round competition.

Otherwise, don't hold it at such a place where this slovenly, faux natural links demands a pragmatic application of rules as this.

cheers

vk

[TEPaul]

"So if you are in a sand filled divot in the middle of the fairway this is deemed to be a micro-bunker?"

Wayne:

Of course not. Did that bunker Johnson was in look like a sand-filled divot? If it did to you then some 900 foot tall 100,00 lbs golfer must have taken that divot and put sand in it.

[PThomas]

I think this sums it up for me....

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=5463625&sportCat=golf

Exactly...how much clearer could it have been??

dont blame the course or the architect, it was Dustin's fault

[Mike Hendren]

V. Kmetz, have you played Whistling Straits?

Mike

[Garland Bayley]

IMO Dustin's most appropriate response should be to say "what a stupid I am." and let it go at that.

[Scott Coan]

This is the best picture I can find.  Hopefully some more will come out showing a greater perspective.  There's no question it's sandy and that in and of itself should have set off alarm bells to a professional.

My recollection from TV is that there was absolutely no entry point into this so-called bunker.  Just matted down sandy fescue grass that transitioned into a sandy area that still had a bunch of grass in it.  There definitely looked to be something like a lip on the uphill side of things.

Pity his ball did not come to rest right on the transition point of the sandy fescue to the sand-with-some-dead-grass-in-it-that's-called-a bunker area.  I would have loved to hear the officials explaination of just exactly where this "bunker's" boundary is.  



It should be obvious to everybody that this hillside is choc full of Pete Dye's bunkers.

[David_Elvins]

I'm not an official

You don't say.

Golfers must follow rules strictly.  if in doubt, they can ask a rules officla.  It's part of handling your nerves under pressure.  

end of story.  

[Kevin Pallier]

God what robbery...

I'm watching Kaymer - he's a superb golfer and it seems a nice man, i'm ahppy for him - but the best golfer was not identified this week and I can say that because we will never know what Johnson's tally in the playoff was.

VK

According to my definition it was  - Kaymer won - as he took the least strokes.

I absolutely feel for DJ but The Rules of Golf are the same for everyone. As a professional golfer he should have known better and if not - he should have asked.

[Richard Choi]

When you play on a Mickey Mouse course, you should not be surprised at getting a Mickey Mouse result.

In Dustin's defense, when you have so much rain on the course, you are going to have a lot of people slipping and sliding on the course during which a lot of turf gets removed. Once it is dried, baked and trampled over, it would look pretty much the same as the lie Dustin had.

It was a dumb rule and congrats to PGA for trapping someone with it.

[rboyce]

Pete Dye is clearly known for his liberal use of waste areas which are not bunkers. And, it was a-ok for Stewart Cink to literally draw a line behind his ball in a Pete Dye designed waste area on his way to victory in a PGA event. In fact, the waste area that Cink played out of was much closer to the hole than the one that DJ grounded his club in.

But, somehow, all the waste areas on WS are bunkers. What a silly situation. Is the point of pretending these waste areas are bunkers to protect par or what? WS is a Frankenstein monster of a course. Half cosmetic links course and half lakeside parkland.

[TEPaul]

In the Rules of Golf there is no such thing as a "waste area" or a "waste bunker."

Does anyone know where the very first so-called termed "waste area" or "waste bunker" was and who did it?

[rboyce]

here's what the USGA said after Stewart Cink won a PGA tour event after using his finger to move all the impediments away from his ball in a Pete Dye designed "sandy area" aka waste area.

http://www.usga.org/news/2004/April/USGA-Explanation-On-Status-Of-Waste-Bunkers--/

"a natural sandy area is not a hazard, and a player whose ball lies in such an area may ground his club lightly in, or remove loose impediments from, the area as the area is through the green"

[rboyce]

Geez, even after listening to the rules guy try to cover his butt it is largely unclear what he is trying to say. He repeatedly says the course is unique which is practically meaningless. He goes on to say that no free relief is available from bunkers which is not applicable to the topic at hand nor what Dustin requested. He continues by saying that rocks in the bunkers are considered loose impediements - this is the Stewart Cink strategy. Never does he really address the topic at hand even though he is supposed to be answering the question about Dustin Johnson. The whole thing is very disappointing and, frankly, asinine.

http://www.thegolfchannel.com/golf-videos/grounded-6800/?ref=26000

[Tom Dunne]

I've been reading like crazy on this controversy all evening. The one thing that really stuck out to me in watching the telecast (and count me as a viewer who didn't think he was in a bunker at the time, but rather a trampled gallery area, based on the abundance of litter in the vicinity) was that Johnson, if nothing else, deserved much better crowd control. If the galleries are so thick and close that you can't discern the shape or dimensions of the hazard--or even understand that you're in one in the first place--I consider that a problem.

There's a post on Geoff Shackelford's site, "Who is this man with Dustin Johnson's Group?", that has a clip from the telecast. You see people not only standing on the lip of the hazard, but also actually in it. One of these people standing in the bunker, a woman in a white skirt "skort" is pretty clearly a marshal, based on the way she's holding her hands. There's just no way this scene could've helped Dustin and his caddie understand what was really going on. Yes, Johnson committed an infraction--the call was the correct one. Not going to argue that. But I think it's unfair to simply ask him to say "what a stupid I am" and move on when the marshals, officials and crowds gave him a ridiculously small amount of room to assess his situation. I mean, at the very least, they shouldn't be standing in the same bunker as the guy, practically humping his leg.

Just a bad scene. Shame it's overshadowing Kaymer's accomplishment.

[Richard Apperly]

Given DJ was clearly oblivious to what was unfolding, I wonder how many other similar indiscretions were made during the week that went completely unnoticed?

Just noticed on Ian Poulter's Twitter, he says "I didn't see any notice in the locker room but I wasn't looking for them. They may have been there".

DJ and Poulter probably aren't the sharpest tools in the shed though.

[Dustin Knight]

I guess the gallery will now be allowed to trample through the bunkers at Augusta?? If the PGA declared all sand on the course a bunker, then what about every shot played fronm the rough or a sand filled divot??? Hazard?? Im think not... if it's a bunker then keep the gallery out of it.

[Jim Nugent]

Can someone show me where the PGA said all sand is a bunker?  The local rule posted earlier in this thread does not say that.   

 

[Philippe Binette]

Imagine if he had made the 8 footer.... big celebration on the green crowd goes nuts,,,,  and then

euh sorry, you haven't won, and you're not in the playoff

[David_Elvins]

If it has sand like a bunker,

If it has a lip like a bunker,

If it is drawn in the course yardage book as a bunker.

Then it is probably a bunker. 

[Brad Klein]

Those spectators are crazy. I'm amazed someone hasn't been killed out there. They stood just as close when Tiger hit a full bore fairway metal from the left rough on a par-5 Sunday.

[Scott Warren]

Brad, I saw that shot and thought the same thing. Tiger's 5 wood was off a major sidehill, no less. Lunacy!

[Steve Kline]

They interviewed Pete Dye; he said he agreed with the PGA's characterization of these areas as bunkers. He did , however, make an inconsistent reference to PVGC and TOC ( The Ocean Course).

He also said that he should add more bunkers to the golf course.