Stuart Appleby rips Whistling Straits

[JWL1957]

Huh? NOwadays Tweeting IS how you say something outloud. He damn well knew that would be made public. That's not hiding. Hell, Twitter's probably the fastest way to get your opinions out there.

Agree. Where is the hiding?

[zeg]

As far as only certain local rules being allowed, I think a course can pretty much make any local rule it wants. It can deem that woods are lateral hazards, allowing player to drop at the point of entry rather than re-teeing to speed up play

No, there are very tight restrictions on what local rules are permitted. It's not uncommon to come across local rules that are not legal. For example, your example is not permitted. You cannot declare anything that does not meet the definition of a water hazard to be a water hazard. Further, it's almost specifically not permitted by Decision 33-8/35:

Q. The areas immediately adjacent to the fairways consist of large embedded boulders, thick desert brush and prickly cactus. A player whose ball comes to rest in such areas has no opportunity to play a stroke. Would it be proper to make a Local Rule under which such areas would be treated as lateral water hazards? A. No. There are many courses where the areas adjacent to the fairways are of such a nature that a ball therein is almost always lost or unplayable. Thus, such a situation is not abnormal.

(The detail that cactuses are involved is immaterial, since the decision only notes that areas you can't possibly play from are common, so woods would be the same.) This one is broken around here all the time, often with peculiar quirks about being allowed to ground in the "hazard," etc. I understand why they do it---for safety and pace of play---but it's really not permitted under the rules. It should be an environmentally sensitive area if they don't want you to play out of it, and then should be played as ground under repair. The Rules and Decisions weigh in quite a lot on what local rules are impermissible. Have a look through the decisions on section 33.

let them pull stones out of bunkers (as WS had in place) and even deem that sandy areas that people walk in and vehicles drive over are bunkers and not waste areas.

The section on local rules clearly allows a committee to declare stones in a bunker to be obstructions, as they did. This is probably because of the obvious safety issue and the fact that it's not common for sizeable stones to exist in bunkers.

As for the latter, that was not the doing of a local rule. The areas fit the definition of a bunker, so they cannot be made otherwise. You might be able to permit special play from within those bunkers, but they will always be bunkers unless they are re-landscaped out.

Sure, they can't change fundamental rules like letting you re-tee for free, but as far as marking the course or even allowing pick clean and place, I think anything goes.

It's absolutely not anything goes. Lift, clean, and place is explicitly offered as a local rule as well. You're correct in the sense that the permissible local rules must be minor deviations, but if it's not something that's been addressed in the appendix on the subject, the committee needs to get permission for the rule.

[newtogolf]

There were sandcastles in some of these "bunkers". What would the rules officials do if a ball landed inside one of these castles or on top of a bunch of empty water bottles. I can't believe they are going back there in five years with the same rules as this year.

[zeg]

Empty water bottles are obstructions and you can remove them. If your ball is on top of them, you place it on the spot below its location. That's easy.

For sand castles? Decision 33-8/9:

Q. Some holes are accessible to the general public, and children play in the bunkers leaving footprints, holes and sand castles.

May the Committee make a Local Rule allowing a player, without penalty, either to drop his ball outside a bunker damaged by children or to lift his ball from such damage, smooth out the sand and replace the ball?

A. No. This would be a modification of Rule 13-4.

Play it as it lies. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the sand castle was in a bunker even farther from being in play than the now-infamous one on 18.

[Fourputt]

Sure part can be a bunker and part can be a waste area - just like part of a waste area or area of grass can be in bounds and part out of bounds. All they need to do is stake the course where the rope line is intended like OB markers. If you're inside, it's a bunker, if you're outside, it's a waste area. The pros will get a determination with the rules official just like they do on OB calls. Problem solved.

A course may call such a policy a "local rule" but such a rule will never be approved and will never actually be a local rule under the Rules of Golf. Courses cannot do anything they want and expect it to be an approved local rule. You are totally wrong on that. And the rule for lost ball IS a fundamental rule. Why would you think it isn't?

On a course like Whistling Straits with more than 1200 bunkers, trying to manage a regulation which designates some of them as waste and some as bunkers would be a nightmare. They did the right thing by making sure that the information was made available to all players, and then it was the players' responsibility to conduct themselves accordingly. Only a fool would think that a course like this one could be managed any other way. All Dustin Johnson had to do was ask a simple question: "Am I in a bunker?" When my ball lies in sand my first thought is to treat it like a bunker unless I have certain knowledge to the contrary, and I'm not playing for millions of dollars and a major championship. I simply cannot fathom how a professional golfer can go totally brain dead in such a situation.

[ERdiesel]

All Dustin Johnson had to do was ask a simple question: "Am I in a bunker?" When my ball lies in sand my first thought is to treat it like a bunker unless I have certain knowledge to the contrary, and I'm not playing for millions of dollars and a major championship. I simply cannot fathom how a professional golfer can go totally brain dead in such a situation.

Not to mention his professional caddy as well....................

[zeg]

Empty water bottles are obstructions and you can remove them. If your ball is on top of them, you place it on the spot below its location. That's easy.

Oops, I guess it's not quite easy---it's dropped, not placed, on the spot.

[sean_miller]

I simply cannot fathom how a professional golfer can go totally brain dead in such a situation.

That's probably because you're not good enough to ever get into that position. I can't fathom it either.

[zeg]

All Dustin Johnson had to do was ask a simple question: "Am I in a bunker?" When my ball lies in sand my first thought is to treat it like a bunker unless I have certain knowledge to the contrary, and I'm not playing for millions of dollars and a major championship. I simply cannot fathom how a professional golfer can go totally brain dead in such a situation.

I am a bit more sympathetic to DJ than you are, but I otherwise agree. Watching the first time, when I saw him grounding I thought to myself, "That's funny that he's on sand, I guess he's lucky to be in a sandy spot outside a bunker or hazard," and I remembered a case where a guy had been grounding his club in a leafy area on a course that had some non-sand bunkers. In that case, the commentators were worried he was going to incur a penalty, but it turned out that he was safely outside the bunker so there was no penalty.

When I heard about the penalty on Sunday, I went back through the online broadcast and looked at the shot again and, if you're looking for it, it was flat out obvious he was in a bunker. I'm sympathetic---with the chaos of playing from the middle of the gallery, the excitement at only needing to save par for a probable win, and (I'm sure) thoughts of proving yourself after his poor 4th round at the US Open, I can understand that his situational awareness was impaired. It doesn't make it ok, it's still a terrible mistake for a professional to make, but I suspect every pro has made some mistake like that early in his playing career. It's sad for DJ that it happened like it did, but I bet he'll never make that mistake or one like it again...

[BruceMGF]

USGA Definition of a bunker:

Interesting that the Whistling Straights course superintendent, interviewed on TNT Sunday morning, said that the bunkers there can't be counted because nature is always creating new ones and obliterating old ones. Not exactly "prepared".