How Good Can a Golf Course be with No Sand?

[Adam_F_Collins]

It seems to me that if a golf course is really going to seem "artificial", that it is often most glaringly apparent in its bunkers.

There are so very few sites which contain the natural soils and environment in which bunkers really appear natural at all. So how about designing a lot more of them without any bunkers?

Would we embrace them?

Maintenance costs would surely be less, construction costs would be a lot less. But how can we give the course the drama it requires for the most satisfying playing experience without bunkers?

What about dramatic folds and hollows? Bring back the swale, perhaps?

How good can a course be with no bunkers?

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Three excellent examples are Royal Ashdown, Berkhamsted and Painswick.  I'm told that Piltdown (also bunkerless) is good, but I've not played it.  

[Nate Mady]

Ticonderoga in Upstate NY, is bunkerless.. It's fun to play, a brook comes into play on several holes, and there's a lot of elevation changes..

[Ted Kramer]

I don't see any reason why a course could not be great without sand. I think that sand is the most over-used feature on golf courses, I would prefer to see less of it in general.

-Ted

[Adam_F_Collins]

Can a course be truly "great" without it? Would it always be seen as somehow "toothless" or "neutered"?

[A_Clay_Man]

There are so very few sites which contain the natural soils and environment in which bunkers really appear natural at all.

I don't know if this really true. From the left coast to the right, this continent is full of sandy sites.

Maybe it's just that very few have designed a golf course around the natural features that incorporate the look I assume you are talking about.

[Adam_F_Collins]

I don't know if this really true. From the left coast to the right, this continent is full of sandy sites.

And how many of them use the sand that's native to those sites, rather than importing glaring white silica sand?

[Tony_Chapman]

Adam - Jeff Brauer completed a restoration of a the Lincoln NE city course called Pioneers Park. The place was bunkerless when it was built and he left it that way. It's a pretty fun golf course, but I wouldn't call it "great" by any means. Maybe Jeff will pipe in here.

Tony

[Kelly Blake Moran]

Adam,

I have always liked this topic, and it becomes more of an issue with me at the commencement of each project.  For me, the benchmark from which to judge just how low in number can you go and still create a great course is the original Augusta National, which opened with 22 bunkers.  

[Bruce Katona]

For the better player, sand is less of a hazard than a tightly mowed chipping area.  A chipping area gives the player a choice of putting, pitching or chiiping the ball up or down to the hole.  The more options you give a better player, the more difficult.  For the average player, he/she will either putt or chip the ball toward the hole and escape from the area in one stroke, which is not always the case with a bunker.

Chipping areas also will speed up play as it should not take more than one stroike to escape from the area.

[Adam_F_Collins]

In a way, bunkers can be a lot like swear words...

...they get a lot more attention when you don't use them too often.



There are a lot of courses out there with "stupid bunkering" where there are just too many - so you just don't pay any attention to them. They become more like texturing than threatening.

[A_Clay_Man]

Adam- The courrses I was thinking of do use their natural stuff, or at least it looks it. Places like World woods, and the dunes golfers club are built on a very sandy area of central Florida. CErtainly Sand Hills didnt import any silica. And I believe Dick showed us near the entrance to Wild Horse where Josh takes his sand.

Granted, many of the stuff that passes for golf courses do import foriegn material. It's likely what makes them forgetable.

[rgkeller]

>>many of the stuff that passes for golf courses do import foriegn material.<<

Indian Creek, Winged Foot, Merion

[Don_Mahaffey]

Adam,
Would you call the Rawls course forgetable? How about Black Mesa?

Not every course is blessed with a sand pit.

[cary lichtenstein]

Not a chance.

 I played Raptor Bay by Ray Floyd in Naples. Here is a pro with a great short game and he builds a course without a sand trap.

What was he thinking??/

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:  We've discussed this before, so hopefully I am not contradicting myself this time.

I think you could build an excellent course without a bunker.

But I think the same course would probably be better with a few bunkers, just to provide the variety of playing out of sand, pitching over a hazard, driving around a bunker, etc.

Just building no bunkers for the sake of building no bunkers is a gimmick.  You should build a hole (or a course) with no bunkers only when you really think the hole or course would be better without them.  Really building 18 holes on which any bunker would be superfluous, would be a hell of a task.

[rgkeller]

Adam,
Would you call the Rawls course forgetable? How about Black Mesa?

Not every course is blessed with a sand pit.

But the architects still provide many a sand pit, and compete for who can design the prettiest.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Not a chance.

 I played Raptor Bay by Ray Floyd in Naples. Here is a pro with a great short game and he builds a course without a sand trap.

What was he thinking??/

Here is Ron Whitten's take on Raptor Bay's waste area vs bunker question.

Ron Whitten Review of Raptor Bay

[cary lichtenstein]

Mike:

Ron Whitten's review is pretty much right on target, although his 6.5 rating was very generous.

The course was boring, tedious and monotonus. Couldn't wait to get off it.

Cary

[James Bennett]

I have spoken of Waikerie in Soth Australia's Riverland before.  It is a bunkerless course, because of low maintenance issues (I think they use about one and a half greenstaff, plus some volunteer labour to maintain the course in great condition for a small community).

What makes the course is the land (generally undulating, with some sand hill ridges running through it, some flatter areas only on a part of the first 9) and the terrific greens complexes constructed siome years ago.  They are a wonderful selection of greens, each individual and memorable in their own right.  I must endeavour to find out who built these greens.

The course would almost certainly be better with a dozen bunkers, but that would lead to maintenance problems for a small community.  A terrific course that all levels of golfers can enjoy.

[Doug Siebert]

There's a fairly new course nearby called Saddleback Ridge that's IMHO something of a "hidden gem".  Its got only two bunkers, one behind the green of a 200 yard drop shot par 3 that doesn't really come into play, and one in the dogleg of the short par 5 that follows that's actually pretty unnecessary since the dogleg is also protected by a thick cluster of trees immediately to its left, and OB immediately to the left of those trees.  So it really could work very well as a bunkerless course.  And I'd call it a solid 6 on the Doak Scale, and can't imagine anyone calling it less than a 5.

Not to say I couldn't find a few spots where the addition of a bunker might add a bit of an additional strategic element, but I figure if you only have two bunkers and neither really matters, you might as well fill both in and get the quirk upgrade points by going bunkerless.

[Tim_Weiman]

Adam,

Not all my local friends agree, but among the world's famous courses, I think Ballybunion would do just fine if every bunker were removed. That isn't to say I would recommend it, but the topography itself would still leave plenty of fun and challenge.

[TEPaul]

We have covered this subject before on here and I've said I'd love to see golf courses built with no sand bunkering---if no natural sand exists within hundreds of miles of the raw site. There's no question at all that the sand bunker is that odd vestige fearture of golf architecture of the linksland that hung on in golf architecture to such an extent that it's become a percieved virtual necessity in golf and architecture. All of us should read Max Behr's article on this called "The Natural Use of Sand".

But first one needs to look at why the sand bunker hung on in golf architecture to the extent it did. The pertinent question is what are the reasons it hung on as it did? What are its basic uses even in areas that have no natural sand?

My answer is it's one of any architect's primary tools of his own style and it's his primary tool to create strategies in golf.

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