Ken Jackson

Sports Writer

So let me get this straight: baseball, with all of its bang-bang plays at full speed, won’t use instant replay for fear of ruining the “flow of the game,” even if that flow is like frozen toothpaste.

Baseball won’t, but golf will?

Yeah, nothing says tradition like guys in tweed coats hundreds of yards away in the air conditioning looking for golf rules infractions on TV monitors.

Martin Kaymer won a playoff over Bubba Watson on Sunday to win the PGA Championship for his first major, blah blah blah. Who cares?

The only thing that anybody wants to talk about is the two-shot penalty that Dustin Johnson was assessed ... on the final hole ... while in the lead ... for grounding his club that the PGA of America — and it alone — said was a bunker, therefore a hazard.

You don’t ground your club in a hazard, said the ancient Scotsmen who created this leg cramp of a sport 500 years ago, because we wouldn’t want you to improve ye lie in a place where you shouldn’t hit ye bloody ball. (Wonder what they’d think about golf carts?)

The problem is that, when you think of a sand trap, you think of a hole in the ground, surrounded by sod, with a little rake that you use to cover your footprints, or break over your knee after needing five swings to get out of said crater.

I don’t think of a spot where 30,000 people spent four days standing and watching as a sand trap.

When the PGA said that for one week, “Any piece of sand on the whole course is a bunker,” they changed the rules of golf. At my course, there’s a fill sand patch near the driving range, and sand runoff from new sod on a couple of holes. I know those aren’t bunkers.

Johnson never thought he was in a bunker, so there was no malice to break a rule. Apparently, he also didn’t have the common sense to check to see if those in tweed coats changed a rule about hitting off the sand.

Sadly, for not reading that week’s rules, and because he couldn’t keep his ball in the grass, he got what he didn’t deserve.

They changed another rule last week, allowing players to move stones out of bunkers, which is normally a big no-no. Why not have a whole new rule book for the PGA, then? What next, only caddies are allowed to hit 8-iron shots?

Speaking of caddies, Johnson’s – plus his playing partner, and the pairing’s rules official, and David Feherty, CBS’s roving golf sherpa covering the group – didn’t pick up on the rule, either. Counting Johnson, there’s five guys who are perpetually around golf. They all missed it.

It was TV that caught it. If this had happened on Johnson’s third hole of the first round at 9:34 a.m., nobody ever knows about it.

And, you think that’s the one can of worms to pass around? Say Johnson’s par putt on that final green, which would have given him a one-shot win and the trophy before the penalty, rolls into the hole.

The fist pumps into the air. The crowd goes nuts. CBS’s Jim Nantz on the call, proclaims him the champion. His wife or girlfriend comes bouncing out of the crowd and plants a big wet one on his kisser. Then the rules official comes out. “Uh, Dustin, you just lost by one stroke.”

If it’s me, that’d be the last ruling that chap would have ever made.

So they show him the replay and ask him, “Did you ground your club?” He’s got three possible answers. “No” is a lie. “Yes” means you just gave away the tournament. The best one would be, “I don’t remember. Look at the replay and you tell me.”

Maybe, like in the NFL, there’d be no conclusive evidence that he goofed, and he could head for the champagne.

This leaves a chance for more worms. Coming soon: A holding penalty called in from the TV truck during a Cowboys-Redskins game.

The record shows Kaymer won the 2010 PGA Championship. Ironically, Johnson still qualified for a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team in October.

So, maybe he’ll get his pound of flesh against the Europeans.

And, Kaymer is on that European team.

Maybe they’ll meet with the Cup on the line.

Maybe there will be a camera following that group.

Maybe Johnson will just keep his ball in the damn fairway.