Upset Martin Kaymer sets the record straight

Martin Kaymer got ever so slightly aggrieved yesterday as he held court in the PGA Championship interview room at Whistling Straits.

He had won his first major here in Wisconsin in 2010, a victory that capped a remarkable season for the European Tour as it followed Graeme McDowell’s US Open and Louis Oosthuizen’s Open successes at Pebble Beach and St Andrews respectively.

Yet for some at his press conference here by the shores of Lake Michigan, there was a sense his victory was less a case of the German’s majestic putting and ball-striking that week and more that he was a beneficiary of a quirky course design with its 1000-plus bunkers and the way one of them derailed an unfortunate Dustin Johnson.

No matter that Kaymer, then 25, had defeated Bubba Watson in a three-hole play-off, it was Johnson’s mishap at a bunker on the 72nd hole of regulation that was the defining moment five years ago.

“I need to say it’s a little sad that every time we talk about the PGA Championship here it’s like that Dustin threw it away,” Kaymer said when initially asked about the Johnson incident when the American grounded his club in waste area outside the ropes, only to later learn it was a bunker and he had incurred a two-stroke penalty that sent him back into a tie for fifth place.

“People talk about that he would have won. He would have been in the play-off and it would have been still Bubba, Dustin and me. And that’s the only thing that’s a little strange about the whole thing.”

Kaymer has a point but the bunkers at the Pete Dye-designed Whistling Straits remain a talking point. For a start, there are, according to Golf Digest magazine which sent one of its writers out to count them, 1,012, averaging more than 56 per hole.

There are 109 on the par-four eighth alone while only 18 on the par-three 12th. All in all they are a little difficult to ignore, unless you were Dustin Johnson of course.

“It never once crossed my mind that I was in a sand trap,” Johnson had said post-round. “I just thought I was on a piece of dirt that the crowd had trampled down. Obviously I know the rules of golf, and I can’t ground my club in a bunker, but that was just one situation I guess. Maybe I should have looked to the rule sheet a little harder.”

There is no danger of a repeat this week, tournament officials sending a notice to competitors regarding bunkers, which stated: “All areas of the course that were designed and built as bunkers, filled with sand, will be played as bunkers (hazards), whether or not they have been raked.”

No excuses this time around, then and Darren Clarke sounded a hopeful note when he said: “A lot of the bunkers here are not really in play. I’d like to think they’re not really in play.”

As is always the case when these debates break out about the fairness or toughness of the rough or hazards — the problem is only a problem if you fail to keep the ball in play. That may exercise a few more brain cells this week and Bubba Watson, runner-up to Kaymer in 2010 admitted that may bring more caution to player’s shot-making decisions five years on.

“Everybody has it on their mind, as much as media is talking about it,” Watson said. “We have it on our mind, but the goal is to hit the fairway.”