Furrowed bunkers and course ratings

[Bill Brightly]

Does anyone know how this would effect course ratings? Let's say furrowed bunkers become a trend at some courses and scores go up by a couple of shots. Do the course raters currently have a mechanism in place to adjust for this?

[Mark_Fine]

Most course raters look at bunkers from the perspective of a bogey golfer and already consider them a "hazard" (whether they are or aren't).  I'm not sure this will impact course or slope ratings.  

[JohnV]

Bunkers have an adjustment called Extreme which can be used to add one or two points to the bunker obstacle value for a hole.  The definition of Extreme is:

If a pot bunker or other unusual bunker feature makes recovery extremely difficult (e.g., a tree within the bunker interferes with the swing or blocks the recovery shot, railroad ties or stack sod shore up the bank, or a large bunker on the line of play generates long bunker shots over sand to the green, etc.)

If my math is correct, adding 2 to the bunker rating for all 18 holes on the course would add approximately 0.2 strokes to the course rating and 4 to the slope.

Therefore, over the course of 4 rounds, it would add about 1 stroke for the scratch player.  It would add about a stroke a round for the bogey golfer.

[Jay Flemma]

I'll just look at each on a case by case, bunker by bunker basis.  After all, furrowed bunkers at Caledonia are a completely different matter than say, World Woods.

[Tom Huckaby]

I'll just look at each on a case by case, bunker by bunker basis.  After all, furrowed bunkers at Caledonia are a completely different matter than say, World Woods.

Jay - SW is asking about Course Rating (initial caps purposefully added), the process of deriving course ratings and slopes, for handicap purposes.  Which of course is a high calling indeed, one to which JV and me and a few others here I think donate our time.

In terms of course rating (lower case intended), well... yes you'd be correct to assess it on a case by case basis.