I was on a boat coming home from Long Island when the drama unfolded at Kohler, and Dustin Johnson played himself out of the playoff yesterday afternoon.
I was looking at ESPN scorecenter, and I noticed that Watson & Kaymer were in the clubhouse at -11, while Johnson was getting to 18 at -12, in the lead.
Immediately, like every other golf fan in the world, I was brought to the memory of Johnson's brainless US Open collapse at Pebble Beach, shooting an 82 and blowing a big lead on the last day. I also was thinking about how hard 18 had been all weekend, and not a lot of birdies had happened there, but all he needed was par.
I am not going to criticize his decision to use driver, I think thats a completely personal "feel" type of thing, and if it was feeling good, then so be it.
But I am going to criticize what happened next. The dude needed par to win, and you can read all about what happened, but as a person who was watching the drama unfold via twitter, watching other pros feel for him, and journalists mock him, I thought that there'd be some kind of grey area, once I saw the replay. But I don't think there was.
That course, all weekend, was a display of unusual bunkers - rough cuts of grass meeting sand - a very unusual course for a major, but not for a PGA Championship really, and every mistake was greeted by a really odd look to the green, or odd lie in a surface you're not used to playing in.
I figured when I saw the replay there'd be some confusion as to whether or not this could be a bunker, but I was mistaken. I saw the replay and my first thought was, "jeez, that looks like a bunker to me!"
I understand that he put the ball into a gallery, and that there were people, stands, water bottles, even a turf mat covering that area, but each golfer is given the supplemental rules of golf at the tourney. Each golfer can read on a sheet in the clubhouse, almost explicitly, that this exact situation may occur.
There is a rules official nearby all the time. If he had just asked, it would have been clear. Heck, he didn't even NEED to ground his club, he chose to.
This isn't a situation where I feel bad for him, like if the ball moved after grounding the club, or if a bad lie was brought on by trampled spectator grass..
Johnson, in 2 majors this year, has been caught up in the moment mentally - he is doing the kind of thing we slay other athletes for, and I think we have that right. When Chris Webber called a timeout in the finals, when they didn't have one, he was wrong. When DeSean Jackson spiked the ball before he reached the end zone, when Leon Lett let Beebe strip the ball in the Super Bowl, we all mocked the athlete, and deservedly so.
I'm not saying we should pile on Johnson, b/c I think he clearly has an issue with handling pressure (And for crying out loud, if all you need is par, why in the world are you BOMBING a 4 iron out of a bunker/waste area instead of just trying to lay it up, chip and putt for the win?! And what the deuce happened on that putt for par? He missed it by way more than a pro should miss it by?!
Johnson collapsed, mentally. He isn't a victim of the rules, he's a victim of himself. You can feel bad about it on a human level, but don't feel like the game cheated him, b/c it didn't. This is a great example of how fair Golf really is as a game.
