Inside Golf - September 2010

12
September 2010

www.insidegolf.com.auINSIDETHEROPES ...........................................................................................................................................................................................

AnthonyPowter PGA Championship: Slow start - thrilling ending! The final Major of the season had plenty of drama, excitement and some fantastic golf. Inside Golf was there, behind the ropes, to bring you the scoop. Martin Kaymer showed fine form during his PGA Championship victory

DESPITE the fog that hampered the first two rounds — and the penalty fiasco that marred the conclusion — the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits proved to be arguably the most entertaining Major championship of the season.

The “last shot of glory”, as it’s aptly named by the PGA, delivered everything sporting fans demand. Controversy, emotion, mishaps and another newcomer to the Major stage. The championship had it all.

After scraping past Bubba Watson in a three-hole playoff, Martin Kaymer beamed at his reflection on the Wanamaker Trophy. He freely admitted later that he was one of Germany’s more unlikely sporting heroes and that he hoped the soccer-mad nation would take some time out to reflect on its golfing achievements.

It was the third-straight Major that a European Tour member has won, and now seven of the last nine Major winners have been first timers. Kaymer joins Bernhard Langer as the only German to win a Major.

Kaymer’s record prior to the PGA Championship
had shed no light as to what was to transpire in
the fading Sunday evening at Whistling Straits.
Kaymer had secured a tie for eighth in June’s US
Open at Pebble Beach — where he tied with a
third famous German, Alex Cejka, for only his
second top- 10 finish in a major. More curiously
still, he had missed the cut in all three of his
Masters appearances.

This was not the first time a pro has been caught out on Pete Dye’s Whistling Straits so-called “links-style” layout.

At the 2004 PGA Championship, Stuart Appleby was in contention and was hit with a four-shot penalty when he removed leaves and twigs from behind his ball then grounded his club.

Whistling Straits is not a true links. To infer this gives no appreciation to the wonders of the proper links courses in Scotland, England and Ireland, which are marvels in themselves. Yet never once in the Majors that are played in the UK have you seen bunkers outside the field of play where they can be overrun by spectators. Whistling Straits is, and continues to be, an exception to this.

Both Johnson and his caddie have themselves to blame for the way their Major ended in the fashion that it did, and it only compounds to Johnson’s crippling final-round meltdown at the US Open at Pebble Beach in June. Yet this was worse.

The PGA had warned all players during the week as to the status of wasteland and the many fabricated bunkers that litter the Whistling Straits layout (including those outside-the-ropes “bunkers” that resembled more of a kindergarten sandpit than anything else.)

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