The fate of golf would seem to lie in the hands of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and the United States Golf Association. Can we expect that they will protect and reverence the spirit of golf?
MAX BEHR
While the below images show fans in bunkers during tournament play, none were as on top of players and masking bunker boundaries as what happened with Dustin Johnson.
From Rob Matre, Tiger in 2008 at Torrey Pines.
And from the old magazines, courtesy of the art department.
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So much for Germans dancing in the streets over Martin Kaymer's PGA Championship win. Reader Lloyd emailed a friend in Germany and shared his exchange.
Your excellent young golfer Martin Kaymer won the final major of the golf year yesterday
Did anyone in Germany watch or notice?
He was very good BTW, but this is no surprise
L
And the reply:
:-) I did not hear anything about this :-)
but dirk read about it in the newspaper. just a small notice.
g
Reader David Foster brings up the next logical question in the post Dustin Johnson club grounding debate: "Why do we have bunkers at all? Let's get rid of them all together."
Not fill them in mind you, he says, but "remove the definition and every other mention of them from the rules. They (physically) can remain and we will just play them as through the green."
Naturally, I'm for this and anything else that makes the rules of golf a little less ridiculous.
So what would change? David lays out the case:
1. You could ground your club in the area formerly known as a bunker. Even practice swings. Lots of em. And no, Bobby Jones would not rise out of his grave and tell us we were all cheating. Yes, you would be able to test the surface and change your shot selection accordingly, just as we do in the rough and the fairway. No one complains if you take 10 practice swings in the fairway to test the firmness or lack thereof of the turf.
But wouldn't this leaded to a widespread "testing the surface" debate?
You would not be able to smash your club down behind the ball to improve the lie, because that would be improving your lie, just as it would be in the rough or fairway. In long rough, good players don't press their club down into the grass because they are afraid of either the ball moving, or being accused of trying to improve the lie.
Well, except Kenny Perry. Sorry, go on.
The same would hold in the sand. If the sand was hard packed you could set your club down without fear, but in soft sand would be more careful, just like in the fairway or rough. Judgment and skill would continue to be important.
2. No more "digging in" in the sand to build a stance. And don't give me the "moving your feet back and forth is not building a stance" line. If you can't do it in the fairway, you can't do it in the sand.
3. No more rules officials standing around trying to figure out what is or is not a bunker, or spillover, or attempting to define the margin of the hazard. Guys playing in their regular Saturday game would be able to apply the rule as effectively as if they had their own personal rules official.
They used to call this: PLAY IT AS IT LIES!
4. The embedded ball rule could remain the same. As long as you only allow a drop for balls embedded in the "closely mown area" nothing would change in regard to balls plugged in sand.
5. Casual water situations in the sand would be easier to deal with. Just take the closest relief, regardless if in the sand or not. Sometimes dropping out of the sand would be an advantage, other times it would not.
6. The architectural significance or the strategic implementation of sand would not be diminished, as players would still prefer to be in the fairway. And by the way, rake it or don't rake it, I don't care. Maybe some clubs would choose to rake their sand and others would not.
The question is, would courses ramp up their bunker maintenance even more if bunkers are played through the green, or would the opposite effect occur? Is much of the capital poured into bunkers done so because golfers can't ground their clubs and therefore expect perfection to compensate for the inability to place their club down?
Either way, David concludes...
It makes the rules easier to understand, easier to follow and enforce, and easier to explain to new golfers. It does not reduce the importance of skill, in fact, it makes skill more important. You know how I know that it could be accepted? I have never heard anyone say that the 91 Ryder Cup at Kiawah was not a legitimate tournament or the outcome was adversely affected by players grounding their clubs. No one even remembers that element of the tournament. If I remember correctly, it was Larry Startzel that was the head rules official that week. I wonder what he would say about this?
We must track Larry down!
Okay, why do we need "bunkers" at all?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 08:51 AM 32 Comments | in 2010 PGA Championship, Architecture, State of the Game Reader Mark noted that if Dustin Johnson looked at his yardage book he would have seen yardages. He asked if I could procure a copy of the 18th diagram. After a search, Mark himself came up with it and shares the work of Stracka Line. Not much grey area here. Though in Johnson's defense, I never saw him look at the book. But there is also a missing gap in the CBS coverage where he purportedly was approached by the PGA's walking official, David Price.
I think we've all conceded that Dustin Johnson is at fault for this untimely PGA Championship mistake, but many elements clearly aren't sitting well based on the comments in earlier posts. (And by the way, so many great insights on both sides of the aisles, thanks for all of the thoughtful posts).
One of those posts comes from reader Ted Purdy, who responded on the Frank Hannigan thread about the wording of the PGA's notice, which was wheeled out as clear evidence that Johnson should have read it and therefore, he would not have made the mistake he made on 18. (Though if he didn't think it was a bunker, the notice is irrelevant as he is not going to ground his club in a bunker at any golf course.)
But as Ted notes, the supplementary local rule pertained to the lie and possible relief you would get in a bunker, not in actually determining which of the sandy pits at Whistling Straits was a hazard and what wasn't. Purdy writes:
The purpose of the local rule was not to say that all sandy areas constituted a hazard but to inform players that no relief would be granted to players for footprints, tire tracks or other "irregularities of surface" in a hazard. To say that it provided clear notice to all players that all sandy areas on the course would be considered hazards is misleading at best. The point of the notice was to say that you wouldn't get a free drop.
I disagree that the notice was created to define what would be considered a hazard, and the attempt by the PGA to use a notice worded as that one was to justify its decision to call the place where several hundreds of people were standing throughout the whole episode a bunker, is laughable.
Indeed, Purdy appears correct if you re-read the notice with that view in mind:
1. Bunkers: All areas of the course that were designed and built as sand bunkers will be played as bunkers (hazards), whether or not they have been raked. This will mean that many bunkers positioned outside of the ropes, as well as some areas of bunkers inside the ropes, close to the rope line, will likely include numerous footprints, heel prints and tire tracks during the play of the Championship. Such irregularities of surface are a part of the game and no free relief will be available from these conditions.
Again, Johnson made an enormous mistake and could have avoided his fate by simply slowing things down (God bless him for being a fast player!), asking Price what his options were, and getting a reminder not to ground his club. But as Purdy notes, the notice wasn't as clear as some have suggested.
This is one more reason why I believe the ultimate loser in this affair will not be the PGA, Dustin Johnson or even Whistling Straits, but instead, a growing hostility toward the complicated, unwieldy Rules of Golf.
Twenty-eight panelists hopped on a bus and toured the Nebraska trail of great golf. No, it's not a setup for a joke.
Brad Klein writes about leading the Golfweek gang to several places, including the Prairie Club where they tested out the Horse Course after playing the Graham Marsh-designed Pines and the Tom Lehman-designed Dunes.
After some demanding golf on those two courses, we took a break (and a stiff drink or two each) for a simpler excursion on The Prairie Club’s Horse Course, a Gil Hanse-Geoff Shackelford collaboration. The scorecard for the day showed all of 732 yards, par-27 for the nine-hole loop. It’s ideally suited for the kind of goofing-around golf that might include a two-man scramble in which you play your worst ball. But with its shots across sandstone canyons, it’s also a harbinger of a third 18-hole course to come, and the land that Hanse has to work with for that one includes open prairie land and some dramatic play across the Snake River Canyon.
I figured we were done with the dreaded body of work until the next run-up to a draft or meaningless awards show, but apparently it's now infested the Ryder Cup selection campaign.
Tiger is now high on Corey Pavin's list, unlike last week when he probably said more than he should have to Jim Gray.
"I'm looking at him in essence like any other player. He isn't ... but he is," Pavin said. "I'm certainly not going to disrespect other players by considering him different from other players. I have to look at the way he's playing, the way he played, and I have to look at his body of work as well. If anyone can turn it around quickly, it's him."
Let's see, body of work. 14 majors, 71 PGA Tour wins. That works.
Come on, you'd love to hear Merch grill Captain Pavin about being told he was going down, or Gray try to turn the table on Merchant about who has smooched Don King's rear the most (and best).
But alas, Michael Bamberger took on the task of mopping up after last week's spat and offers a few new details.
Last Saturday, in an interview with SI, Pavin said, "It was a very strange deal. I don't understand what he meant by ['you're going down'] at all. I'm baffled."
Gray said in a statement, "I never threatened or said those words to Corey Pavin." You might as well blame this one on the Tiger scandal too. If only he had played better golf this year, all this could have been avoided.
Oh come on, you can see Gray asking Pavin if he's planning to pick Anthony Kim no matter what.
Through a PGA official, SI asked to hear Lisa Pavin's recording of the argument. The Pavins did not respond to the request.
Can you say, World Golf Hall of Fame? I see it in the Pavin locker, or maybe as part of the audio tour after he brings up the Cup!
The whole thing makes you wonder if golf is ready for the modern media age, in which everything is parsed to death and sentences such as "Pavin said that Gray said" get turned into "Gray said."
And then there was this:
Meanwhile, at the CBS compound, Jim Nantz and Gary McCord and other CBSers were glued to the Pavin-Monty proceedings on TV and gleefully needled their colleague, David Feherty, for precipitating the line of questioning of Montgomerie. (The day before, Feherty had gone on the Dan Patrick Show and discussed some of the fine points of a British court injunction that prevents Baldwin from talking publicly about her affair with Monty.) The media echo chamber in golf has never been so loud.
Nice to know they find hypocrisy rib-worthy!
Monday, August 16, 2010 at 09:10 PM 2 Comments | in 2010 PGA Championship, 2010 Ryder Cup, Colin Montgomerie He tore his rotator cuff at the PGA Championship and miraculously, he's all better and teeing it up this week in search of his 19th WD since 2005, explains John Strege. You can see more of Daly's rehab than you ever wanted to witness in this post by Brooks.
Nice scoop by Bill Fields to track down the PGA's David Price, shedding some background on the official at the scene and his take on the incident. Price not only says he offered Johnson a quick reminder that he was there if he needed help, and that Johnson had asked for assistance not once on the back nine (14th), but twice on the back (16th), making the 18th hole brain freeze that much more painful and bizarre.
For Price, the pressing need on the 18th seemed to be getting the large gallery out of Johnson's way so he could play his second shot. "It was very chaotic," Price said. "This was a very difficult situation based on the topography. There was a very high hill, completed filled with people, because once the grandstands on the right side of 18 filled, this was the only place people could see the green from. The hill was filled with people, and the other side of it was very steep, so people couldn't back up and go down. The marshals did the best they could, but there were probably 3,000 or 4,000 people on that hill."
Price left the area around Johnson's ball to walk 30 yards toward the green and help clear a wider gap on the right. Before he walked away, he "asked Dustin if there was anything he needed, if there was anything I could do. I just didn't have any question it was a bunker, and had there been a question, he should have asked before he proceeded. He knew I was there because I already had answered a couple of questions concerning a bunker with him." Johnson played this shot without any asking any questions.
Clearly, this moment Price alludes to must not have been captured on the live feed. (And for conspiracy theorists, remember, Price is not the man in the white shirt walking by Dustin Johnson, that's an honorary observer.)
Geoff
**ESPNDallas.com's Richard Durrett also talked to Price (thanks Michael C.) about the scene at the 18th green. Price noted this difference between the back nine bunkers Johnson asked for assistance on and the one he did not ask about.
Price said the bunker on No. 18 that Johnson was in was formed like many other bunkers on the course.
"It was a rather small one, but it was an area that had been dug out and filled with sand," Price said. "The only thing that made it different than previous bunkers is that he hit the ball so far off line, it was in a bunker that had been trampled down instead of one that was finely raked. We told players on the information we gave them that all sand on the course was considered a hazard, even if there were footprints or tire marks."
And, 3000 people swarming its edges, who had to be restrained!
Doug Ferguson reports that the PGA president Jim Remy sees no way to remedy the bunker situation at Whistling Straits.
Remy said he didn't see a a practical solution for 2015, or in 2020 for the Ryder Cup.
"Do you mark 900 of them not as bunkers and 300 as bunkers? How do you ever mark them?" he said. "Clearly, with this happening, players will be more aware of it in the future. And we didn't have any other infractions during the week."
I see four ways. Select the option that is the most affordable and would do wonders for the curbing the excessive amount of money funneled into bunker care worldwide.
1. Never return to Whistling Straits.
2. Put a rake with each bunker, maintain each bunker and rope each bunker in the gallery areas off.
3. Fill in most outside rope area bunkers, maintain and protect the rest from burrowing children.
4. Take the rakes away from all bunkers and play it as it lies.
Monday, August 16, 2010 at 04:15 PM 24 Comments | in 2010 PGA Championship, Architecture, Course Setup, State of the Game I wasn't joking when I said the mug shot was probably greater than the crime, but come on, three months for a little brush with Mary Jane? Alex Miceli reports on Matt Every's PGA Tour suspension for conduct unbecoming, and this:
The suspension will provide Every, who is 144th on the money list with $438,517, only one chance to retain his Tour card. Every will be eligible for the last event of the Fall Series, the the Nov. 11-14 Children’s Miracle Network Classic.
It's a good thing conduct unbecoming is not extended to players who violate the Rules of Golf! Especially two different ways on one hole!