Bunkers are more hazardous to the top players than I imagined.
Watch out for those damned statistics.
A-Bunkers are benign hazards for the better players and they have indeed gotten easier in recent past.
B-What statistics don't have is a way to reflect is the difficulty of the shots referenced for these sand saves to make fair and accurate comparisons (sort of like global warming data).
My support for such outlandish statements?
A-Better, more consistent and predictable sand is now available. It is better maintained, bunkers are better designed to aid this maintenance and equipment is much more specialized. You can get THE wedge you want.
B-Pins are being put in much more inaccessible spots over the last five years or more and progressively more so in tournament play. Short-siding leads to a need for supreme skill for an up-and-down. The mathematics to quantify this is way too complex for the PGA Tour to calculate meaningfully.
Place the pins 20 feet from the bunkers and away from downslopes out of them and you do have little to hold the good player back. They are thinking of making the shot. Make it 8-9 feet on a downhill-sloped stimp 11 green and take your 20 footer as you must!
Bunkers are overall easier, bunker shots probably are not.
I think you have a tautology here, no? You contend that bunkers are easier but the shots are harder, so the percentages of sand saves are essentially unchanged. There's no way to quantify this, of course, since there are no objective statistics on this. Before this thread, I think everybody here would have assumed that the numbers were far better (and improving) than they actually are. The only thing that matters (and can be measured) is getting the ball in the hole, and, in that regard, bunkers are NOT becoming more benign.
To go a little further, couldn't we assume that players on the PGA Tour would KNOW that if the average bunker shot has gotten more difficult due to pin positions, green speeds, etc., and that it is imperative that they NOT be in particular bunker, say on the short side of the hole? Assume for a moment, just for the sake of argument, that this is true; wouldn't that imply that the AVERAGE bunker shot that they actually have to play would unchanged, if not easier, because the bunkers they DO hit into are less penal? But we can't quantify that either...
I don't think there is a reliable way to explain the percentages that have been presented here. I'll offer as an alternative explanation the possibility that having THE wedge, and perfect conditions, etc., don't make the difference that we have assumed that they do, just as having the newest driver or ball doesn't make the amount of difference that I would like to think it does, or that advertising tries to lead me to believe.