USGA's Davis, "We made a big bogey"

Appearing on Golf Central, the USGA Executive Director/CEO stood by the Dustin Johnson ruling that everyone from the Fox announce team on down questioned, but apologized for the handling of the penalty.

Talking to Lisa Cornwell, Davis asked for a mulligan--oh the irony--on the execution of the news delivery to Johnson. Will Gray reports:

"When you look back at the whole issue, you can break it down into two parts. It's a rules of golf issue, of trying to make sure that you apply the rules correctly the way they're written. And we do believe we did that," Davis said. "But there's another part of it in terms of the conduct of the championship itself, and that's where we'd really like a mulligan because clearly we made a big bogey."

Rule 2016-1, the USGA wants mulligans! Lift, clean and place for everybody!

Unfortunately the question will dog the USGA for years to come: if they believed in the letter of their law, why did they feel the need to await Johnson's defense of a crime most feel he did not commit?

"That really gets down to putting in essence the championship on the final day almost in limbo to where the players, and in this case Dustin, didn't know where he stood in terms of a score," he said. "That's where, if we could do it again, we should have just applied the penalty once we looked at the video."

While this apology will appease some, I'll be shocked if this convinces the viewing public and contestants that Johnson violated the rule.

The full interview, followed by a post Davis chat with Adams, Oberholser, Rosaforte and Hoggard.