German Martin Kaymer sealed a Ryder Cup debut in the grandest manner possible on Sunday night - by winning the final Major of the season after a three-hole play-off with left-hander Bubba Watson.It would have been a three-way play-off, but Dustin Johnson, the player who missed out on the US Open Championship in June with a closing 82, was penalised two strokes after it was ruled he had ground his club on the sand before hitting his second shot at the final hole.

He was one ahead with one to play and thought when he missed a six foot par putt that another chance was still to come in the play-off.The course on the banks of Lake Michigan has over 1,000 bunkers, but many of them are not easily defined, so the rules of play for the week are that "all areas... designed and built as sand bunkers will be played as bunkers (hazards), whether or not they have been raked."

As Johnson was left to reflect on another disappointment, Kaymer and Watson went at it alone after both finished on the 11 under par total of 277, one ahead of Rory McIlroy and Zach Johnson.Watson struck first by pitching to two feet at the tenth, but Kaymer who has previously consulted putting coach Phil Kenyon, responded with a 15 foot putt on the short 17th.

The decisive moment came when Watson then struck his second into the water when they returned to the 18th.He did hit the flag with a chip, but could do no better than a double-bogey six and 25 year old Kaymer, having laid up from the rough, won with a bogey five. Kaymer's victory makes it two European wins in the last three Majors following Graeme McDowell's Pebble Beach triumph.