Running 2010 PGA Thread

Good question milehigh. Who made the call and when?
Don't see that anywhere in the stuff I've read.

 

How the hell is there a bunker so far off the fairway that the gallery is walking through it? Was it marked as a bunker or just some random spot of grass mixed with sand (as you often get on links courses) that 1,000 people happened to have walked over?

When I saw it live, the thought he was in a bunker never entered my mind. In fact, when I heard there might have been a penalty, I assumed they were talking about his THIRD shot on the hole, the one from someplace over the back of the green.

Now, I feel bad for Johnson getting hosed, but there is no guarantee he would have won the playoff anyway. And, as someone else said, if he puts his drive anywhere remotely close to the fairway on No. 18, none of this happens.

One other footnote: Seeing what happened to Johnson (82 on Sunday) back at the US Open and what happened to Nick Watney (81) today makes it all the more impressive what Louis Oosthuizen did at St. Andrews under the pressure of leading a major championship for the final two rounds.

 

False. You can use whatever club you please on a green.

 

All golf rules should be amended with the following tag line - "... to gain a competitive advantage."

In this case, no advantage was gained.

For example, let's say it's a clearly defined green side bunker that a player is in. He steps into the bunker 25 feet away from his ball, trips on the rake and tumbles with his club hitting the sand. By the strict rules, that's a penalty. If you reach down and pick up a leaf laying in a bunker just because you're passing the time while someone else takes a shot, that's a penalty. The list is endless.

 

What also preserves the integrity of the course: Not allowing spectators to trample through "bunkers" for four days.

 

If it takes a rules official that damn long to explain why something IS a bunker....

 

The problem then becomes, it's impossible to define when a player gains an advantage and when he doesn't. Situations become even murkier. You can't write the rules and consider intent.

Next time an event is played at WS, the gallery ropes ought to be placed outside the areas where bunkers are located. If that means spectators are 100 yards from a fairway at some holes, so be it. To me, part of the injustice in all this is that a player can hit a ball in a bunker that is pristine and perfectly raked, then into one where kids have been building sand castles, and I find it somewhat troubling that the player is asked to treat both situations the same.

 

So this is starting to sound like bullshit course more than bullshit rule?

And I love that you have to know the rules of golf very well to play the game. I thought you could not use a lofted club on the green, but I was wrong. That might have cost me in tournament play.

 

I read today that this actually happened at the 2004 PGA, too, to Stuart Appleby. Instead of just posting a notice, why the hell didn't the tourney officials have a rules meeting for all golfers, like a NASCAR drivers meeting?

 

Who cares? Tiger wasn't involved!!!

 

A couple problems here:
1. All I heard on TV was the course has "upwards" of 1,200 bunkers. No one ever gave an exact number, because no one fucking knows. And if you don't know the number of bunkers on a course, then how the hell is anyone supposed to know what is and isn't a bunker?

2. From what I've heard, the place is built on sandy soil to begin with. So Ferguson was right... with that mash of people around him, how was he supposed to know if he was in a bunker or just a worn out patch of earth?

3. Someone on the radio made a valid point: Johnson can't have been the only one to make that mistake over the course of the tournament. No way, no how.

I don't think CBS had any idea what was going on until Johnson was walking off the green. There were no comments when he was standing over his last putt, anyway.

A confluence of factors combined to hose Johnson... bad tee shot, overly quirky course design, piss-poor crowd control. But, the dude took it better than I would have.