Written by Mitch Cyrus

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25 year old German golfer Martin Kaymer won the 92^nd PGA Championship in a three hole playoff over Bubba Watson at Whistling Straits early Sunday evening.

That was the result.  The story was something altogether different as this tournament will be talked about for years due to the controversy that saw Dustin Johnson go from just missing a putt that would have won the event to finishing fifth after a two stroke penalty.

Johnson walked to the tee box on the 72^nd hole only needing a par to win his first major, but you had to wonder if somewhere in the back of his young mind he wasn’t flashing back to June, when he entered the last day of the U.S. Open with a three shot lead; and then proceeded to blow it in a matter of 30 minutes.

With that in mind, he stepped to the 18^th, called “Dyeabolical” in honor of designer Pete Dye, was the toughest hole on the course, a par four playing an average of almost 4.6, with only one of the 70 professionals scoring a birdie on the final day.  Johnson sprayed his tee shot far right into the crowd, and then seemed happy that he had a great lie on what looked to be a trampled down piece of ground without any grass.

It was a bunker.  One of over a thousand on the course.

That fact didn’t occur to Johnson as he lined up his shot, first grounding his club in the sand.

He didn’t hit the green with his second shot, and then he had a decent pitch up the steep bank to seven feet from the hole, where he just missed the putt.

Walking off the green, he was met by the rules official, and the controversy was on.

All players had been warned all week about the fact that they should “consider any patch of sand as a bunker”…but Johnson admitted that he did not read the rules.

So that is the primary memory that will come out of this tournament, which is a shame, because for me, I will be looking at this tournament as one where we may have finally seen a changing of the guard as the young players come to the forefront.  When you look at the Top 10 in this tournament, you can see the future of professional golf.  Kaymer, the stoic German (isn’t that redundant?) is now ranked fifth in the world, and his precision game should keep him winning tournaments for years to come.

Bubba Watson is a late blooming 31 year old, self taught bomber who reminds people of a left handed Tin Cup (without the strippers or Cheech Marin as his caddy).  On the final hole of the playoff, still tied with Kaymer, he tried a “grip it and rip it” shot out of the rough that fell short and into the water.  When asked about it, his quickly stated that he’d try that same shot again and again, that he was going for the win, not to lay up.

Other youngsters on display were 21 year old Rory McIlroy, just missing a putt at 18 that would have put him in the playoff; the 26 year old Dustin Johnson, 28 year old Camilo Villegas, who made a last day charge up the leaderboard, and 22 year old Jason Day.

The only exception to this Under-35 party was Steve Elkington.  The 47 year old 1995 PGA Championship winner was attempting to become second oldest man to ever win a major, and also set the record of the longest period between major wins.  After a birdie on 16, the Aussie was in a four way tie for the lead, but his tee shot on the par 3 17^th just rolled off an eight foot embankment at the back of the green, costing him a bogey.  Forced to go for the pin on 18, he miss hit, and bogeyed that hole as well, settling for a tie for fifth with Johnson and Jason Duffner.

But Elkington’s disappointment was not that great.  For an example of a letdown that would almost rival  Johnson’s, you would need to look no further than his playing partner Nick Watney.  Watney went into the final round with a three stroke lead over the field…the same size lead that Dustin had at Pebble Beach.

And the same results.  Watney butchered the first hole for a double bogey six while Dustin was getting a birdie, so all three strokes were erased on the first hole.  He steadied the ship for a few holes, and then imploded on the par 3 seventh, hitting into Lake Michigan and then flubbing his third shot on the way to a double-par 6.  Watney ended up the tournament never once shooting in the 70s.  His scores were 69-68-66-81.  Ouch.

One Tiger Woods was never really in the tournament, although you wouldn’t know it from the CBS coverage showing almost every single shot on Sunday as Woods finished in 28^th place, shooting a one over 73 on the final round.  However, it was his only round over par for the tournament, a substantial improvement over his debacle in Akron the week before at Firestone in the World Golf Championships.

Phil Mickelson fared a bit better, but was never in contention.  He did have an outstanding round of 67 on Sunday to get him into a tie for twelfth, but he was never really a threat.  One truly wonders now if the 2010 Masters title is the last major we will ever see from Phil.  The diagnoses of psoriatic arthritis is a devastating blow to the golfing future of the 40 year old lefty.  According to some medical experts, the Enbrel medication he is taking achieves the desired results in 50% to 60% of the patients, and they can return to their normal life with no signs of the disease.  But for the rest?  If Phil is in that group, his career is pretty much over.

In addition to all the attention always paid to Tiger and Phil, none of the long-esteemed “Big Names” had any real impact on this tournament.  Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Stewart Cink, Jim Furyk, David Toms, Davis Love II, and Retief Goosen all were former Major winners who finished back in the pack, although Furyk was near the top of the leaderboard  at the beginning of play on Sunday before falling out with a 77.

They at least made the cut, something that couldn’t be said about Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia, Mike Wier, Kenny Perry, 2010 U.S. Open winner Graeme Mcdowell, 2010 British Open winner Louis Oosthuizen, or defending PGA Champion Y.E. Yang.

Perhaps the biggest winner of the weekend was the course itself.  Whistling Straits was the anti-St. Andrews, a links course crossed with Pebble Beach, designed almost exclusively for HD television.  Unique as a links course in the U.S., it provided quite a bit of entertainment as the viewers were able to see the world’s best try to manage a course that gave them lies they would see nowhere else.  While I complained in my article about the British Open about how boring the course would appear on TV, Whistling Straits was the polar opposite.

Was the course unfair?  Not really.  Is the course a gimmick designed just to show how hard golf can be?  Maybe.

But the course played the same for everyone, which ended up requiring brains and precision rather than just pure power, along with the imagination needed to get yourself out of sideways lies, hip high fescue, over 10 foot embankments, or out of one of the 1,000 plus sand traps.

Dustin Johnson wishes the number was one less than whatever the true total is (supposedly, even Pete Dye couldn’t count them all).  His failure to understand the rules, fair or unfair, will be discussed forever.

But it is still Martin Kaymer’s name that will forever be etched upon the Wannamaker Trophy.