Monday 20 June 2016 07:17, UK
Paul McGinley pays tribute to Dustin Johnson as he finally made his major breakthrough at the US Open, and he has harsh words for the way the USGA dealt with the controversial ruling on the fifth green.
Talk about winning it the hard way. Not only is it difficult winning your first major, it's an incredibly difficult thing to do when you are carrying the baggage that he was. There were at least three major championships Dustin Johnson should have won by now, a lot of attention was on him.
He played this tournament on the front foot this week and you've got to really admire that about him. The driver came out and he kept pounding those drives down these slithers of fairways that there are here. He played aggressive golf when he needed to and he seemed to be in control the whole week.
Butch Harmon talked about there being something different about Dustin this week and he was proved right in the end. He finally got the lead and wrestled it away from Shane Lowry and things looked like they were going his way and for somebody to come back in again and for someone to externally put more pressure on him and then for him to regroup through again you've got to really hand it to him.
As for the situation with the penalty on the fifth, all the players were in the same boat. Nobody had clarity and that was the problem. Nobody had clarity as to where they stood in the tournament and if you don't have that you can't build your strategy around it.
I can't believe that the USGA would let a situation like this evolve and develop where we had utter confusion. Jeff Hall explained the situation afterwards, but it was lawyer speak - he went round in circles, he didn't give us a real explanation.
He said his actions, what actions? We watched the TV, we saw it 10 times over. Dustin didn't ground the club, it was quite clear he didn't ground the club and he didn't touch the ball because the ball went backwards. So they are all the questions that I want to know the answer to. That, to me, wasn't a satisfactory explanation.
There is confusion again, there is no clarity and it just needs a human being to come out and give a clear explanation and if not don't let it happen again. This cannot happen again, in the heat of competition in one of our premier golfing events with a worldwide audience of hundreds of millions we can't have this kind of confusion. Sport thrives around competition and clarity of scoreboards.
As for Shane Lowry, he had a great chance to win this, but I agree that Dustin won it. It was a difficult day for Shane, he made some mistakes but I am so full of admiration for Dustin Johnson.
As much as I wanted Shane to win as an Irishman and a European, I'm full of admiration for Dustin, not just for winning his first major championship, but for the way he did it and the extent of pressures that were put upon him.
