It seems like everyone in the golf world had an opinion on the Dustin Johnson/USGA rules snafu except DJ himself. Yes, he said during and after the penalty was assessed, in the scoring room no less, that he didn’t cause the ball to move but that was it.
As we all carry on about his misfortune and the USGA’s fumble DJ is laying low, nowhere to be seen. Good for him. He’s handling the aftermath as classy as he did the entire debacle.
But that doesn’t stop us from rambling on about it.
Here are two wonderful pieces offering some great insights on how the whole kerfuffle went down.
When we finished the round, Dustin was taken into the scorer’s hut to be shown the footage. I wasn’t invited to join him. Again, that disappointed me. I had to say to someone, ‘Shouldn’t I be in there as his marker?’ So they took me in after that. It was odd, though. I felt like I should have been involved in every aspect of what went on.
The whole thing was handled very badly. I don’t think anyone should be treated the way Dustin was. A ruling was made on the fifth green, and that should have been it, cut and dried. He certainly should never have been asked to play the last six holes of the U.S. Open without knowing what the score was. I was thinking going down the 12th, Does Shane Lowry in the next group know where he stands? It was ridiculous.
“In the scorer’s hut, Dustin continued to maintain that he had not caused the ball to move. I agreed before and did again after watching the video evidence. Mike Davis was there. He told us, ‘No, there is going to be a shot penalty.’
“We were only in their maybe two minutes. I could tell when I went in that they had made up their minds that it was going to be a penalty. They weren’t particularly interested in anything Dustin or I had to say.
“At that, Dustin said, ‘OK, whatever. Let’s just get on with the prize presentation.’ Thankfully, it didn’t matter to the result. I’m not sure what they would have done if it had mattered. I’m just pleased it didn’t.”
The boys at Golf.com in their Tour Confidential take turns shooting arrows at the USGA but this from Alan Shipwreck is Exhibit A for the case proving the USGA had a severe breakdown.
It was a brutal public relations hit for the USGA, and Davis’s quasi-apology didn’t really help. I got the first interview with him at Oakmont. Davis was upstairs in the locker room changing into his tie for the trophy presentation and I pounced on him. At that point DJ was on the 16th hole and Davis still hadn’t seen video of the incident! He was just going by reports from other staffers. It was clearly an institutional breakdown in communication and procedures. This will all lead to some soul-searching and clearly the USGA needs to overhaul how it handles things on the ground at big tournaments.
It seems like Davis let his boys of the rules committee issue the penalty. Maybe that’s why he sent them out to do interviews, to face the music and he didn’t make an appearance until Monday.
Check out the Diaz article here and the Golf.com piece here. Both are worth the time.
Related Articles
