In Praise of the Skinny Bunker

[Mike Hendren]

Tom Paul's Essler thread raises the question:  Why aren't more modern architects using skinny/trench bunkers greenside?  They: 1) yield various lies; 2) are a cinch to rake; and 3) the pitch from just in front of them is just as difficult as the longer sand shot had the bunker been broader.  

The trench bunker fronting the 17th at North Berwick's West links (the angle of play is from the right):



The Redan is likewise fronted by a trench, though not visible at the extreme left of this photo:



I double-crossed a four-iron there into the extreme upper left edge of the bunker and had no stance.  

Bring back the trench!

Mike
A Casual Golfer

[Jeff_Brauer]

I think the simple answer is that if machine raking is desired, most bunker rakes require 16-18 foot diameter "lobes" to turn without digging up sand.  Where hand raking is planned, they can be narrower.  

For that matter, the bunker show is narrower than the nine foot blade of a typical dozer, which simply tends to build bigger bunkers.  The smallest bunker possible made construction sense when dug by hand, larger ones make sense in most applications now.

I do like the trench effect though!

[Tom_Doak]

Mike:

All of today's architects are too busy trying to build sexy-looking bunkers to make the magazines and impress the raters with their ragged edges.  Trench bunkers are just about playing golf.

We did a bit of that kind of work at The Rawls Course but it wasn't as stark as it could have been because I didn't think anyone in Lubbock [or Mr. Rawls] would appreciate it.  Maybe one of these times I'll have a site where the visuals are not so important to the client, and we'll do some really old world stuff.

Muirfield has some great trench bunkers, too; that's a really good neighborhood for them!

[THuckaby2]

TD:

Given that variety is the spice of life, and golf... and...
how reverently so many US golfers feel about the great UK links.... and...
how frequently simple trench bunkers do show up on the great UK links... well....

wouldn't a course in the US that had these be seen as very different, and very cool in a nod to the UK sorta way, by all types of golfers, rater and non-rater?

Fads are one thing.  Standing out as unique is another.

TH

[Tom_Doak]

The best part of skinny bunkers is that wild shots from average players don't get in them, but they are still effective because they make the next shot a frightening pitch over a deep bunker onto the green.

One of the things I enjoy about Jeff Bradley's extra-ragged bunker look is that he sometimes creates random parts of his bunkers that are very skinny, so that even getting a club on the ball can be difficult.  By the same token, though, he is as guilty as anyone of bunker overkill.

[Matt Kardash]

If I built a course for myself I would have bunkers like that. I guess, in an ideal world, that is what I think bunkers ought to look like

[Tony_Chapman]

This isn't the best picture, but the skinny bunker in front of the second green at Tobacco Road is wonderful.

[JohnV]

Some of the skinny snake like bunkers that Pete Dye did at the PGA West Stadium course are what stand out most in my mind about the course.  I love them.

[Brian_Gracely]

This isn't the best picture, but the skinny bunker in front of the second green at Tobacco Road is wonderful.

Tony,

Welcome back...hope fatherhood is treating you well.  Eventually you guys will figure out how to throw the football

Interesting thing about that bunker is the original yardage books show it being a pot bunker.  My suspicion is it might have have had drainage issues and eventually was changed to the present form.  

As long as I've played there, it's been that long scar.  But the course was there several years before I got down there.

[Mike Hendren]

BTW,

Anybody in the treehouse know how to remove the date stamps on the pics?

Mike
A Luddite

[JohnV]

Mike, I'm sure there is an option on your camera to not put them on in the first place.  Other than that, a program like Photoshop can be used to edit the picture.

[Matt_Ward]

You see the "skinny bunker" concept on quite a few of Jim Engh designs -- the thread / picture of the 16th at Lakota Canyon shows this.

I often think that having these monsterous flowery bunkers does little for holes on a strategic basis. With a skinny bunker the probability that the player must make some sort of adjustment to stance or swing is always a concern and therefore makes having them when appropriate a positive addition.

[TEPaul]

One of the compensating things I've always found about those skinny/trenchy bunkers like the one in the photo in the intial post is the sand in them is generally extremely firm and hard packed (for obvious reasons) and consequently they aren't as hard to play out as a bunker with lighter sand on top. They're a lot like playing out of wet sand---you can really open up your stance beyond belief (which generally gives you more room for a stance and a outside to in swing in bunkers that narrow) and as long as you can swing back and down, the best policy, in my opinion, is to almost stop the very open clubface at impact. The ball will generally sail out  high and soft and you only have to swing about half as hard with that firm sand as in a normal bunker!

But on the other hand for most players who aren't very good in bunkers those things can be a "playability" disaster. Most golfers don't know to open their stance and their club face up as much as is needed for a shot like that and most of them blade the ball sending it straight into a bank or all over the place.

[DMoriarty]

I think the simple answer is that if machine raking is desired, most bunker rakes require 16-18 foot diameter "lobes" to turn without digging up sand.  Where hand raking is planned, they can be narrower.  

For that matter, the bunker show is narrower than the nine foot blade of a typical dozer, which simply tends to build bigger bunkers.

You have got to love these priorities.  Nothing like putting the golf and golfer first.  

[Brian_Ewen]

James Braid designed one , in front of the 18th green at Kirriemuir G.C.

[TEPaul]

We found this year that hand raking our bunkers is not only more effective (less egress damage by machines) it's actually cheaper. The latter fact was a huge surprise.

[ForkaB]

We found this year that hand raking our bunkers is not only more effective (less egress damage by machines) it's actually cheaper. The latter fact was a huge surprise.

Tom

This is probably the best (non-Fireball Roberts/other goofball, of course....) post you have made in your last 15,000 or so attempts.

Just as Dave M. I was shocked by Jeff B's admission that (to some degree) bunker sizes should be designed by consulting the DZ4300 Toro Automatic Bunker Raker operating manual.  You shatter this conventional wisdom in one swell foop!

Keep up the good work!

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Like me, obviously you don't seem to be a big fan of the sand pro. I'd prefer to see all the sand pros of the world confiscated and impounded somewhere. A good Idea would be to find a place about 1/100th the size of the Sahara Desert---perrhaps a 1000 or so acres of Nebraska's sand hills, impound all the world's sand pros out there and then let all the kids of the world come there and mess the place up (the world's international sand box, if you will). They could all learn to drive out there and get to know each other. It'd be one of best efforts imaginable for future world relations and bunker maintenance sans the sand pro!

[TEPaul]

Rich:

It's also pretty interesting that the size of the blade of a dozer dictates the size and shapes of some bunkers. What happened to the shovel? Maybe that's why Bill Kittleman is known throughout the world as a bunker maker supreme. His wife says she can't find any of her silver teaspoons!  

[TEPaul]

Frankly, in those photos Mike Hendren produced in that initial post it's not just the trench bunker I'm impressed with. I'm impressed by how short that grass always is on all those bunker surrounds!

[paul cowley]

 TEP.....as the person who on monday MORNING would hand rake all of the bunkers at pebble beach ,  i have long lobbied for hand raking over machine. [best accomplished with a 28 tooth 6' wooden hay rake IMHO ].......my efforts have been unsuccessfull i must add , as its not in most superintendants mindset..... most have little experience with real hand raking and just assume anything done by a machine is bound to be faster [wheres John Henry when you need him ?].

....of late we have been utilizing more trench bunkers ...and we also are excavating the final shape of our bunkers due to the limitations in shape that a dozer blade can achieve.

....someday i might ask you for any supporting data on the maintenace costs of hand raking .....maybe saving money will get some peoples attention .

[TEPaul]

"....someday i might ask you for any supporting data on the maintenace costs of hand raking .....maybe saving money will get some peoples attention."

Paul:

No problem---happy to do that in the interest of obsoleting all sand pros--but first let's wait until Monday morning so I can call my broker and ask him to short a ton of Toro stock!  

Our assistant super sort of whispered that fact (that we were saving money hand raking vs sand proing) in my ear this Fall but asked me to keep it to myself at all costs. What a guy I am, huh? Practically the next thing I do is put it on the world wide Internet!! If anyone has a secret they don't want kept or would like to start a cool rumor be sure to tell me first!  

[Craig Sweet]

I too would like to see the cost breakdown on hand raking vs. machine. I don't doubt that in many cases it would be no more expensive. And it certainly would have less impact on "mucking up" the bunker....ripping up the liner,piling sand,degrading the bunker edge,etc.

However, on our muni, where I work, we are on the course by 5:30am, and the first group of golfers are off the 1st tee (a par 5) around 6am. It is not unusual to have a group on the green, a group in the fairway and another teeing off.  And this "charge of the light brigade" goes on and on all day long. How long with this onslaught would a worker spend hand raking out the 2 bunkers on #1??  The machine lets our crew get out ahead of the golfers, with little interruption to their game and to our work. That allows us to finish sooner, and move on to more mundane task, such as fixing irrigation.

The skinny bunker shown in the original post probably requires 1/10th the effort and expense to maintain vs. the Engh bunker (16th@Lakota?) shown in a later post. Obviously not all skinny bunkers are created equally.

Personally, I like bunkers to be real hazzards. If you hit into one, you should be penalized. No raking, deep grass surrounding the bunker, nowhere to stand to hit the shot, would all be fine with me.

 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Hendren,

Trench bunkers are one of my favorite features, not just at greenside locations, but paralleling LZ's as well.

GCGC has some neat trench bunkers, some in use, some abandoned.

They provide a substantial tactical dilema in the play of the hole.

One of my favorites is the trench bunker behind the 10th green at GCGC.  That green pitches/slopes from front to back, hence the ideal approach is long, below the hole, however, it you go too long, you'll be in the trench bunker.

It also places a good deal of pressure on the need to be precise if one is playing a ground or running shot into that green.

The issue of maintainance vis a vis sand pros is a valid one, however, one would have to ask, how much maintainance to they actually require.  I submit, very little, and thus hand rakikng isn't that big of a maintainance burden.

There is a spectacular trench bunker on the right side of the second fairway on # 7 at GCGC.  Pictures circa 1936 show how in play and tactically important that bunker is.
Hopefully, the club will restore that bunker and the tie in features, which would enhance that hole, and possibly some others.

The abandoned bunker on # 7 is almost identical to the active trench bunker running alongside the right of # 3 fairway in the driving LZ.

I'm actually shocked that it hasn't been restored yet, due to the obvious benefits of doing so.

[Mike Hendren]

Brian,

Thanks for posting the photograph of Braid's bunker.  It is so ridumentary, yet beautiful in a sense notwithstanding no apparent intent to make it look "natural."

Tom,

Your comment about the surrounds of the first bunker pictured above causes me to estimate that it's effective breadth likely exceeds 15 yards given the greenside enbankment and downsloped entry.  

All this talk of raking brings back good memories.  My dad loved the golf course.  Our little nine holer had two obligatory bunkers flanking the entry to each green.  They were never raked.  Every year before the two days of the annual invitational, he and I would go out at dusk to hand rank all 18 bunkers for the next day.  They were skinny and turned up at both ends.  To this day I get a weird satisfaction out of ranking a bunker.

Mike
A Casual Golfer

P. S.  I just remembered the year the super got liquored up at the Saturday night party and Dad had to step in and mow the fairways.  Raised a country boy, it was the happiest I had ever seen him - driving that tractor and pulling the gang mower.