Caddies agree: Johnson's penalty was a good call, but a tough call

Even people who make their living at golf said it was easy to see how Dustin Johnson didn't realize he was in a bunker, and soon to be in one of golf's greatest controversies.

Johnson's bizarre two-stroke penalty for touching the sand with his club, costing him a place in the PGA Championship playoff Sunday, was the talk of golf Monday. That was especially true during the Keith Cerrato Memorial Tournament at Cherry Valley Club in Garden City, a regional championship for caddies. There, people who know golf intimately sympathized with Johnson, grudgingly admitting it was his job to know that the crowded, scruffy area from which he hit his second shot on Whistling Straits' 18th hole actually was a bunker - and thus "grounding" his club is not allowed.

"If I was his caddie, I would have told him to check the sand before he got in it and see whether it was a bunker," said Willie Colson, who caddies at North Hempstead Country Club after having caddied 17 years on pro tours. "In the U.S. Open and PGA, they have hidden bunkers that you'd never even know [about]. I wouldn't just let him walk in and put the club down."

Naturally, there was much support for Johnson's caddie, Bobby Brown. "You could see it in his face, he was absolutely gutted, the poor man," said Micheal Quille of Ireland, caddying on Long Island for the summer. Eric Lewis of Bellmore, a caddie at Cherry Valley, said of Brown, "He didn't sleep last night."

Dwayne Bussey of Hempstead, another Cherry Valley caddie, was beyond sympathetic for Johnson. "I think the man was robbed. He was robbed," Bussey said. "If you've got people standing in there, how can you consider that a bunker? It's supposed to be marked. It didn't look like a bunker to me, on the replay. It looked like a piece of burned-out grass or whatever."

Cherry Valley head pro Ed Kelly said, "It's up to the player to know all those situations on the golf course before you get to them. But that was a very unusual thing. You have to feel sorry for him - you're about to win a major, you might have one chance in your life to win a major, and now he's not even in a playoff. It's an unusual golf course and that's what caused it."

In his Westchester office, Brian Mahoney, tournament director for the Metropolitan Golf Association, received calls and e-mails all day about Johnson. "Long story short, as the rules are written, I don't see any other outcome they could have gotten," he said. "It's important to note that the referee did exactly what the rules instructed him to do."

He added that officials are not obligated to warn a player about a potential violation, nor are they prohibited from doing so.

"Who wants to be the guy who stops Dustin Johnson before the biggest shot of his life?" Mahoney said. "I just think it was unfortunate for everybody involved."