Dustin Johnson's Bunker Debacle at PGA Championship and Golf's Rules

Like many golf fans I was enjoying the final round of the PGA Championship last weekend as it wound down to the final few holes. There were several players who had a realistic chance of winning, yet there was drama because the course was playing hard and anything could happen.

And that anything happened to Dustin Johnson.

His tee shot on the 18th hole sailed into the gallery lining the right side of the fairway, and landed in a small patch of sand that was well outside the area where one would expect to find fairway bunkers. The area had been walked on and trampled by thousands of fans at Whistling Straits during the past four days. When he got to his ball they could barely make room for him because fans were everywhere.

Unaware he was in a bunker, Johnson grounded his club before hitting his shot.

"Walking up and seeing the shot, never once did it cross my mind it was in a sand trap," Johnson said. "I just thought it was on a piece of dirt the crowd had trampled down. Never thought it was a sand trap. I looked at it a lot, never once thought it was a bunker." And neither did millions of fans around the world watching on television. I know I didn't.

But when Johnson finished his round he was met by rules official David Price, who told Johnson that he might have grounded his club in a bunker. When they started showing the shot over and over again on television and informed viewers what was happening, like many others I was furious that they would try to say it was a bunker. How could they say that when fans were standing in it? I have watched a lot of golf on television and in person, but I have never seen fans standing in the bunker when a player is making his shot.

I began tweeting about how stupid and idiotic it would be to call it a bunker. Many others were tweeting about it as well, and I knew I wasn’t alone in my feelings. As the drama stretched out into several minutes I became even more upset. How could they do this?

After the ruling was made giving Johnson a two-stroke penalty, I was even more upset. I felt he was robbed and I stated that several times on Twitter. Then I read a tweet that made me realize that I was wrong.

Someone tweeted that if it had been Tiger Woods the outcome would have been different. And that is when it hit me. No, it wouldn’t have been different because golf is, and always has been, about the rules of the game.

Johnson apparently didn't read a rules sheet that had been distributed to the contestants that explained a local rule about the bunkers at Whistling Straits, but he isn’t the first PGA golfer to be penalized for a rule infraction. In fact many times golfers will call the penalty on themselves.

At the 1968 Masters, Argentina's Robert De Vicenzo signed for a higher score than he had shot during the final round. That meant he had to accept that score, and missed a playoff with Bob Goalby by one stroke. At the time it was one of the biggest rules snafus at a major championship. But the rules are the rules, and De Vicenzo accepted the outcome gracefully.

Professional golfers often call penalties on themselves. At the Open Championship in 2005, David Toms disqualified himself for signing an incorrect scorecard, and Steve Elkington, Greg Norman, Aaron Baddeley, Paula Creamer, and Bubba Watson just to name a few have all called penalties on themselves at PGA events.

And that is one of the things I like about golf; they follow the rules of the game no matter what it might cost them personally.

Do I think Dustin Johnson got a raw deal? Do I hope in the future the PGA makes bunkers a little more obvious to the players? Yes. But I also hope golf never stops honoring the history of the game by not enforcing the rules as they should be.