So the cry has been raised: Let's rewrite the rules of golf. And then what, baseball? Football? If it's unfair a player can't ground his club in a bunker, it's also unfair that three strikes are out or that a fumble belongs to the last man who had possession.

Indeed, golf has a lot of quirky regulations. It also has a code of honor, which is why a golfer doesn't have to be watched by a referee or an umpire, not that anyone could follow the progress or regress of 150 people on a course.

This has been a tough year for equity. Armando Galarraga threw a perfect game. We saw it in a hundred replays. But because an umpire, as humans do, missed a call, Galarraga missed his chance at history. He took it like the man he is, a virtue we're supposed to learn from sports, accepting the result and moving on.

There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal just before the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin that because tournament fields are too large and because a lot of "unknowns'' keep winning, the sport is in decline with the public. That people didn't care about golf.

If indeed there was a basis for such an assertion, it took a beating the final round of the PGA. Not only did Dustin Johnson's oversight get him on the back pages of the New York Post and New York Daily News, places inevitably reserved for A-Rod, K-Rod and the intransigence of Darrelle Revis, it also got the attention of people we were told had no interest in the sport.

Other than the life and loves of Tiger Woods.

What happened to Johnson, who was assessed a two-shot penalty after he finished because on the 72nd hole of regulation he laid his club on the sand he didn't think was the sand, is unfortunate but not life-threatening.

Career-threatening, perhaps. Although the thought is one of these days Dustin, so talented, will dust them. Right now we have to accept these are the games we play. And if we don't like them, don't play them. Or don't watch them.

An NFL player who calls for a fair catch can attempt a free kick for three points after the catch. Does that make any sense? And how about a pop fly that falls on the edge of the pitching mound and ricochets across the first-base line between home plate and the bag and therefore is a foul? What?

There was a reason these regulations came into existence and nonsensical as they may seem, every competitor is required to learn them. Not the sport's requirement to change.

The beauty and the problem with golf is the person who swings the club is the person responsible for the score on his card, no matter the numbers on the leader board or television screen.

The mistakes with a pencil are not as visual as a shortstop bobbling a grounder or a forward bricking consecutive free throws. Instead, they burst from nowhere, leaving us disillusioned. He did what? Who came up with that scheme?

In 1957, Jackie Pung of Hawaii presumably finished first in the U.S. Women's Open, only to learn 40 minutes after play concluded she had written in a 5 on the fourth hole, not a 6, and even though her total was correct, she was disqualified, a result worse than Dustin Johnson's.

Eleven years after the Pung debacle, in 1968, Roberto De Vicenzo signed for a 4 on the 17th hole in the last round of the Masters instead of the 3 he actually made. In that instance, with a number higher than the correct one, De Vicenzo had to settle for the score that had been acknowledged, missing a playoff with Bob Goalby by a single stroke. As opposed to the two strokes by which Dustin Johnson missed a playoff with Martin Kaymer of Germany, the eventual winner, and Bubba Watson.

Such instances go against our sense of fair play, which certainly is the essence of our competition. Unlike the rest of life, sport is governed by specific rules and traditions - a ball game is nine innings, a golf round 18 holes, an NBA game 48 minutes, non-judgmental events in a very judgmental society.

Notice had been posted that all the 1,200 or so bunkers at Whistling Straits, a diabolically difficult course, even those in which spectators trampled, were to be considered hazards. Dustin Johnson either ignored the warning or in his excitement forgot it. The way base runners sometimes forget to touch second.

If Woods or Phil Mickelson, or in an era past, Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer were in the same place in the same situation, and they wondered whether their ball were in a trap or merely in the rough, they would have asked for a rules official to make the decision.

A USA Today poll showed most fans disagreed with what transpired. Of course they would. It was a sad reflection on golf. It also was part of the rules, and without rules there is no game at all.