"So, if it wasn't maintained (ie raked), it was through the green, whereas if it was it was a bunker. No problems that I heard about during the week."
JohnV:
In my opinion, that may've worked in the tournament you mentioned but I don't see that as a satisfactory solution to the on-going confusion between what is a "bunker" and what is what some courses call "waste bunkers" or "waste areas" which the Rules of Golf so far fail to define or even address.
The fact is that it's very possible to have a bunker that is not raked and a "waste area" that is raked.
In my opinion, things began to go awry in golf and in the Rules of Golf when the prohibition against touching the ground in a hazard or the sand in a bunker was first legislated in golf. The only prohibition in golf in any area of a golf course should be the one that prohibits a player from improving his lie----period, end of story.
The prohibition against touching the ground in a hazard or sand in a bunker probably evolved simply because golfers (and particularly the Rules makers
) felt it was simply too hard to tell if and when a golfer in a bunker in sand improved his lie---or not.
In the very old days in golf, particularly in St Andrews, the determination of whether or not one improved his lie was bascially left to the player himself to determine and that is precisely why they had, in those days, what was referred to as a heightened "spirit" of the game. The idea was that you did nothing in the play of the game to take advantage of your opponent, and that even included the over-arching use of the Rules of Golf to your advantage and his disadvantage.
This is precisely what Davis Love did so well in his match in the Ryder Cup against Darren Clarke. The fact that apparently no commentator or even Rules Officials watching what he was doing (or in this case not doing) even seemed to understand what he was doing, was a pretty sad commentary on where the game and the Rules and their application has gotten.