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USPGA Countdown: Focus on a 1000 bunkers

By: Golf Shake | Mon 10 Aug 2015


Post by Sports Writer, Derek Clements


AFTER just five years, the US PGA Championship returns to Whistling Straits, a golf course with, wait for it, more than ONE THOUSAND bunkers and prevailing winds that often howl at an average speed of about 30mph.

This is the course upon which Martin Kaymer won the US PGA five years ago, after beating Bubba Watson in a playoff. It should have been a three-man playoff but Dustin Johnson, who has suffered more than most at majors, was penalised two strokes after grounding his club in a bunker at the final hole.

This requires some explanation. No professional golfer would knowingly ground his club in a bunker and Johnson didn't think that he had. He had hit his drive at the 18th hole into a sand dune upon which spectators had been walking for all four days of the championship. There was grass, there were footprints and there was sand.


The course could well turn our to be a monster this week! 

Whistling STraits


Johnson hit his shot. He had grounded his club. So what, you may ask. Ridiculous as it may sound, the dune was regarded as a bunker and Johnson was penalised. He claimed that he didn't know, but the entire field had been informed that the dunes on the course were to be treated as bunkers - and nobody else was caught out. To be fair, that may well be something to do with the fact that the television cameras did not have them under the same sort of scrutiny as Johnson was in that crucial moment.

Anyway, the world's finest head back to Whistling Straits for the 2015 US PGA, and those dunes are still regarded as bunkers. You can be absolutely certain that Johnson will not be grounding any clubs this time around. You can be just as sure that nobody will be bringing the course to its knees. This is a ferocious test, a monster created by Pete Dye. To non-golfers, it is a thing of beauty, easy on the eye and a haven for nature, with animals, birds and plants thriving on the property.

Golfers are an endangered species, however, with trouble lying in wait everywhere. If the bunkers don't get you, the dunes probably will. If you steer clear of the bunkers and dunes, there is plenty of water and waste areas waiting to pounce.

Strangely, given the drama it created last time, "Dustin's dune" is not in play this time - instead, there is a massive corporate hospitality unit located on the hazard. Mind you, it is not as if the place is exactly short of dunes - or bunkers!

Whistling Straits demands long, accurate driving and there is nobody longer and straighter than Johnson. Most bombers sacrifice accuracy. The Dustinator is the exception to the rule. He has already proved that he can cope with anything this course throws at him. Jordan Spieth was 17 when the US PGA was last played here, and it is the sort of course that you would think would pose problems (and plenty of them) for golfers who were not familiar with it.

But think about this...Spieth has played in The Masters twice - he has a win and a second place to his credit. He finished a shot off the lead at St Andrews, which he was also playing for the first time. And he won the US Open at the idiosyncratic Chambers Bay, which he was also seeing for the first time. The point of all of this is that if you come to a course with a well considered strategy, and stick to it, the chances are that you will come out on top.

He has already been to the Whistling Straits for a recce, and you can be sure that he will have a strategy. What's more, he will stick to it! 

Image credit - PGA Championship Facebook


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