By Art Spander
Special to NewsdaySHEBOYGAN, Wis. -- For the world beyond America, it was another major championship. For Dustin Johnson, it was another heartbreak, and how many can one man absorb?
For golf, it was another one of those decisions which prove as depressing as they are bewildering. Martin Kaymer won the 92nd PGA Championship Sunday at Whistling Straits. He did it in a three-hole playoff against Bubba Watson after each finished with a 72-hole score of 11-under-par 277. Kaymer closing with a 70, Watson a 68.
It was a playoff which should have included Johnson, who missed out after he was assessed a two-shot penalty for grounding his wedge in a sand trap he didn't think was a sand trap on the 18th hole.
Kaymer joins Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland, who won the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, and Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa, who won the British Open, to make it three majors in succession for players not from the United States.
On a day when third-round leader Nick Watney fell apart, shooting a 9-over 81, it was his playing partner, Johnson, who suffered equally.
Johnson had done at the U.S. Open what Watney did Sunday -- both had three-shot leads after 54 holes before collapsing. But Johnson seemed to have atoned for that failure of two months ago as he stood ready to play the final hole in the PGA Championship.
He was 12 under par, a shot ahead of Watson and Kaymer. He drove into the sand, or dirt, depending on one's interpretation. He then landed in rough near the green. After wedging on, Johnson two-putted for a bogey to fall into an apparent three-way tie.
But as preparations were made for the three-hole playoff, officials announced Johnson had grounded his club in the hazard, against the rules, before his second shot.
The resulting two-shot penalty dropped him into a tie for fifth at 279. The gallery, hearing the announcement of the penalty, responded by booing, something almost unknown in golf.
"I thought it was a piece of dirt the crowd had trampled down,'' Johnson said of the spot where his tee shot landed. "I never thought it was a sand trap. It never once crossed my mind that I was in a bunker.''
It was one of 1,200 bunkers at the Straits, a course diabolically designed by architect Pete Dye along the shore of Lake Michigan.
The PGA of America posted a notice in the locker room and on the first tee throughout the week, reminding players that all bunkers will be treated like hazards - even though the ropes go right through the middle of some of them, and fans can pitch a lawn chair in them.
Six years ago in the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, Stuart Appleby was unaware of the rule and assessed a four-shot penalty.
"It's very unfortunate,'' Johnson said. "The only thing worse that could have happened was if I made the putt on the last hole.''
That would have been for a par and outright victory.
"I was excited I had a putt to win, or thinking I had a putt to win," Johnson said. "Then walking off the green talking to the rules official, saying that I've got a two-shot penalty.''
Asked if he felt something was stolen, Johnson said, "Maybe a little bit.''
Nothing was taken from Watney. He double-bogeyed the first hole and never recovered. "I think I got too far ahead of myself,'' Watney said, virtually repeating Johnson's words after his blowup at Pebble Beach.
Kaymer, a 25-year-old German who won the playoff with a bogey on 18 after Watson hit his approach in the water, moved up to No. 3 in the Ryder Cup standings for Europe and to No. 5 in the world.
"I don't realize what happened," Kaymer said. "I just won my first major. I've got goose bumps just talking about it."
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