mikeintopeka
My personal recollection of DJ's fiasco at Whistling Straits was quite different from the vilification you described. I recall an overwhelming majority of both fans and media perceiving him more as a victim of the PGA's negligence with regard to course setup and crowd control than anything else. I think I even used his example in my initial post.
Vague rules lead to lots of interpretation, and create slippery slopes like this that don't serve the game well. In a similar way, the same thing happened to Dustin Johnson @ Whistling Straits way back when he grounded his club in what turned out to be a bunker, but didn't appear to be.
A better argument would be the popular notion that a majority of tour rules officials have a pretty good history of giving players enormous leeway and benefit of the doubt in a lot of the more common rules situations, like allowing players to manipulate their stances or swings to obtain free relief from sprinkler heads, manmade objects restricting backswings, etc.
We all have expressed opinions about certain rules and how stupid they seem to us. We generally seem more outraged when a player is negatively impacted in those situations, and then scream, "This is why people hate golf!" In turn, the tours and the governing bodies have reacted by trying to make the game 'appear more fair' by doing away with antiquated rules that are no longer relevant in today's game, and adding an incredible degree of latitude with regard to interpretation and "intent."
The latter part regarding interpretation and intent, when it does play a role, most always leads to controversy of some sort. Especially if the player in question has recently been convicted in a court of public opinion for a moral faux pas.
Demanding sports fans to be objective is like asking a dog that kills chickens to stop killing chickens, as comedian Ron White once mused.