"At the end of the day, this issue that Whistling Straits has is really more of an architectural issue."

Brendan Prunty talked to several people about the Johnson episode Sunday, focuses his attention on four people, and has some interesting reactions from the USGA's Mike Davis and architect Rees Jones.

Davis on the supplementary rule and players reading such handouts.

Taking note of his situation would have also allowed Johnson to remember the language in the "Supplementary Rules of Play" distributed to each player upon arriving at the PGA Championship (and that were posted in the locker room). The simple rule: don't ground your club in the sand anywhere.

"We've been around players long enough to know that they don't all read these rules sheets," Mike Davis, Senior Director of Rules and Competitions for the USGA said Sunday night by phone.

"So you try to do every single thing you can to try to prevent something like this from happening. You literally go to the point of doing every single thing you can. But at the end of the day, unfortunately things like this happen."

And this from Davis, talking about the course.

"At the end of the day, this issue that Whistling Straits has is really more of an architectural issue," Davis said. "The rules are the rules. ... The way we approach it is that anything that is actually prepared — anything that is raked or kind of a hollow — we're going to treat that as a hazard. And things that are just kind of a sandy lie with grass here and there, will be through the green. Meaning you could ground your club there."

As for the through the green, many of you have commented about the same thing Jones observed:

"What happened to that bunker was that it was part of the gallery and that's not usually the case at most major championships," said Montclair-based golf course architect Rees Jones, who has done work on 11 courses that have hosted major championships. "What I thought was that the bunker had spilled outside the envelope. It was right on the edge it looked like. It didn't look like it was contained by a frame and it looked like it spilled over. And if the sand had spilled over, you can ground your club."