Golfdom, December 2010

2010 in Review 20 Golfdom December 2010 Continued from page 19 Amazingly weeks after the event the PGA still had no answer for a problem that will rear its head again in 2015 when the championship returns to Whistling Straits Do you mark 900 of them not as bunkers and 300 as bunkers asked PGA President Jim Remy How do you ever mark them Apparently the concept of playing them through the green is just too much to handle But it wont change what happened to Johnson who came out the winner with his matter of fact comments and lack of pretense Rules are rules he said Obviously I know the rules very well I just never thought I was in a bunker or I would have never grounded my club Maybe walking up to the ball if all those people hadnt been there maybe I would have recognized it as a sand trap I knew there werent any waste bunkers But all the bunkers on the course had a darkish color to the sand This was white dirt Craziness of another kind continued just a few weeks later at the U S Amateur where the USGA fell a little too in love with firm brown and fast and lost control of Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place Wash A few weeks after the event superintendent Dave Wienecke defended himself for the state of his course When the USGAs Mike Davis told me not to water at all then I got a little concerned Wienecke says The irrigation system had been turned off for nearly a week already at that point but we had been hand watering the greens I was worried that drying them out any more might cause a problem I thought the course might become unfair because good shots would not be rewarded and I was worried we might lose some hole locations Thats what happened during Monday afternoons first Why is Tiger Woods smiling Were not sure He had an interesting year though