Whistling Straits put the bunk in bunker

Reports out of Whistling Straits this week keep referring to the "bunker" on the final hole that foiled Dustin Johnson's bid to win the 2010 PGA Championship.

This week, the PGA Championship returns to Whistling Straits, and the "bunker" is hidden by a grandstand and considered out of play.

There is one problem with these references.

The bunker didn't look anything like a bunker.

I know. I was there in 2010. I got a close look at the piece of land on which Johnson grounded his club, prompting a two-shot penalty that kept him out of the playoff that Martin Kaymer won.

It is true that Johnson grounded his club before that decisive shot. He did so twice. But there was nothing resembling a bunker in sight.

There was a flat patch of dirt in which a number of fans had been standing. Even after moving out of Johnson's way, many of them remained on the dirt as he hit his shot.

Whistling Straits officials had decided to be unique and idiosyncratic. The course had posted notices that all sand would be considered to be bunkers during the tournament. The course has produced even more rule-defining paper this week.

In 2010, that unusual clarification was largely overlooked until Johnson was penalized.

It was like watching a World Series be decided by the amount of pine tar on a bat handle, or a Super Bowl by a uniform violation.

"The problem is, they play all sand on the course as a bunker," Johnson told Golf.com. "But it didn't look like a sand trap to me. It didn't even look like sand. It looked like dirt. It's where the crowd was standing, and generally the crowd doesn't stand in a bunker."

It was Johnson's responsibility, and his caddie's, to know the local rules. When Johnson lost his chance at a major championship, the law-and-order crowd nodded heads, clucked tongues and thought, "That's what you get when you stray from the path of righteousness."

Johnson eventually would miss the par putt that he apparently needed to win the tournament outright. Then he was penalized two strokes for grounding his club in a bunker.

Even if you agree with the law-and-order crowd that Johnson was fully to blame for the penalty, setting up a course so that a strange and inconsistent ruling can alter the course of a major championship is silly. Worse, it might have been career-altering.

If the PGA held a golfing version of the NFL combine, Johnson would be the golfer who thrilled the most scouts.

He launches the ball high and far. He is a tremendous athlete, once known for the ability to perform circus dunks.

His career has become one of wasted opportunities and squandered talent, and no place will remind him more of that than Whistling Straits, the stolen piece of Scottish coastline tucked alongside Lake Michigan.

For Johnson, that label might prove as permanent as a tattoo.

If not for those grains of sand, Johnson might be considered the favorite to win this week. Whistling Straits, at least by reputation, favors long hitters.

Instead, Johnson is known for losing majors and going to rehab after, as he later put it, "excessive" drinking.

Who knows how different his life might have been if he had won his first major in 2010?

Who knows how different he would be perceived if his return to Whistling Straits was an anniversary of a title, instead of a reminder of silly golf rules and his major failings?