Monday Backspin: Playoffs loom; Bunker-gate; more

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The PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup are here, and I'll have more on how Scott Piercy snuck in, but a week later bunker-gate is still the most-talked about topic in golf and much of sports.

I spoke to one player and two veteran caddies about what happened to Dustin Johnson at Whistling Straits. All saw it. All had different perspectives.

The player I spoke to wasn't at Whistling Straits, but he saw everything unfold on television and he, like a lot of other people, didn't realize Johnson was in a bunker.

"We've all been in areas where we're not sure about the area we're in," the player told me. "In that situation, he had so much going on ... I would have played it like it wasn't a bunker, too."

One of the two caddies, meanwhile, was at Whistling Straits in 2004 when Stuart Appleby was assessed a four-stroke penalty for a similar situation. The caddie recalled mentioning to Appleby's caddie at the time, Joe Damiano, earlier in the week to be careful of sand anywhere on the golf course, and they still got it wrong.

Champion's Replay

Want to hear what Arjun Atwal had to say about winning the Wyndham Championship? Click here Wyndham Championship: Final Leaderboard More coverage: • Highlights • Atwal interview • Complete tourney coverage

"As a caddie, it's definitely your responsibility, more than the player, to know the rules," the caddie said. "You have to know where the obstructions are, where the ball drops are and so on. You gotta know. [Not knowing] is the same as not getting a yardage from a ball drop. ...

"It's easy in hindsight to say [Dustin] should have done this or that. It looked like everything was a little rushed.

"It was pretty clear cut. I don't think they need to make a change [to the bunkers there]. You can't [ground your club anywhere in the sand there]. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. They had it posted. It was pretty clear cut."

As for the second caddie, he admitted that while he always takes a rule sheet, he doesn't always read it from top to bottom. Mostly, he said, the rules sheets are about where the free drops are and so on.

The second caddie was also at Whistling Straits this year and remembers thinking to himself that it was odd that marshals and spectators were walking through the bunkers, even though they were outside the rope line.

"It didn't make any sense," caddie No. 2 said. "If you had a smart marshal who chased the ball down and said let's clear everyone away from it ... Everyone flocked to where the drive was hit and all definition of the bunker was lost."

While caddie No. 2 said he doesn't blame Johnson, or caddie Bobby Brown, he knows how they feel. Early in No. 2's career, his player lost a tournament that some blamed over club selection. "It took me a good year to stop thinking about it," the caddie said. "I still think about it now."

Will this have the same sort of effect on Johnson? Probably not, at least given how he recovered from that final-round 82 at the U.S. Open.

Will this incident lead to a change in 2015, when the PGA Championship returns to Whistling Straits? Maybe, maybe not. One thing's for sure, though, players and caddies will remember this five years from now.

Stock up

Scott Piercy: The last three results for Piercy: T8, T22, T16. That's what you call timing, especially considering Piercy had missed seven of nine cuts before that. His birdie on the 16th hole Sunday also got him into the Playoffs...by just two points. FedExCup rank: 125 (140 last week) Michael Letzig: His tie for fourth at the RBC Canadian Open was the key, but so were final-round 65s in three of his last four starts. Letzig tied for 21st and 18th, respectively, in two of the last three and as a result is headed to the Playoffs. FedExCup rank: 118 (125 last week) Michael Sim: A lot of people expected Sim to win after getting to the TOUR via a battlefield promotion from the Nationwide Tour. While he's struggled at times, two ties for third in two of his last three starts have Sim headed to at least one if not two Playoff events. FedExCup rank: 67 (102 last week)

Stock down

Mike Weir: You know what four missed cuts in the last five starts adds up to? A month off, at least for Weir, who, tried as he did, just couldn't put anything together with only two-sub 70 rounds in his last 12. FedExCup rank: 128 (126 last week) Anthony Kim: I still think Corey Pavin will and should pick Kim for the Ryder Cup team, but it's clear that Kim is far from recovered from thumb surgery with his second straight missed cut and 11 of his last 12 rounds in the 70s. FedExCup rank: 14 (14 last week) Chris Stroud: Just three weeks ago, Stroud got his second top-10 of the year when he tied for ninth at The Greenbrier Classic. Friday in North Carolina, he missed the cut. The latter dropped him from in the Playoffs to out of them. FedExCup rank: 127 (124 last week)

THE BACK NINE: 9 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. If Tim Finchem wants his TOUR to grow globally, I'd say it already has -- 13 of the last 19 winners hail from outside the U.S. with Arjun Atwal winning on Sunday.

2. More rules snafus occurred this weekend with the LPGA's Juli Inkster getting disqualified after a viewer called in a rules violation (Inkster had a training aid donut on one of her clubs). A Candian Tour player suffered the same fate when he forgot to sign for his 61 over the weekend. Both are much more indefensible than what happened to Johnson at the PGA Championship, but I am not a fan of fans being able to call in violations. Fans just shouldn't be able to influence the outcome of a sporting event.

3. Speaking of fan influence, the Wyndham Championship allowed fans to bring cell phones into the tournament and it went without incident. While there was lots of signage about keeping phones on silent and committees roaming the course looking for issues, it's an indication that ultimately this is the direction we're headed in. In this day and age, it's difficult to ask someone to give up all contact and information from the outside world for a half a day or thereabouts.

4. I admit I'm a little surprised no one shot 59 last week at Sedgefield. A bunch of guys flirted with it, but no one did it.

5. Stat that may only interest me: David Toms and Justin Leonard each recorded his first top-10 of the season this past week. Better late than never, I guess.

6. Dustin Johnson had the week off, but the horse he co-owns with Pat Perez didn't. It raced at Del Mar over the weekend. No, the horse didn't win either.

7. The Playoffs will seem a little strange without Sergio Garcia, even if he's been largely non-existent this season anyway. The first two years of the Playoffs, especially in 2008, he was a major, major presence and played some spectacular golf.

8. Has there ever been a Playoffs or Player of the Year picture as muddled as the one we have right now? The next few weeks will go a long, long way to determining the latter. Without entirely spoiling it for you, I'll just say that I like a certain lefthander's chances.

9. I'm sure network executives would disagree, but a 5 p.m. ET finish can be a beautiful thing, especially when you have a long night and an early morning ahead of you. I'm guessing it didn't didn't hurt the ratings in India with the performances of Atwal and Jeev Milkha Singh.

This week's Kodak Challenge hole

HOLE: The par-5, 594-yard 17th at Ridgewood Country Club LAST WEEK: Troy Merritt moved into a tie for the Kodak Challenge lead thanks to a third-round birdie at Sedgefield. Click here to tour the Kodak Challenge holes | Current Kodak Challenge standings

The Forward Spin

The biggest question last week was whether or not the defending FedExCup champion, Tiger Woods, would qualify or even play in The Barclays. Now it's can he make it past the first week of the Playoffs? We'll obviously know later this week, but Woods has never played Ridgewood. Remember, he missed The Barclays in 2008 when his season was cut short by knee surgery. Last year, this tournament was played at quirky Liberty National. The last time this event was played at Ridgewood, Vijay Singh beat Sergio Garcia and Kevin Sutherland in a playoff.