Bunkers- the anti-hazard

[ed_getka]

I doubt many pros were hoping for their shots to get in the bunkers at Muirfield this summer. And fortunately it sounds like not many will hope to be in Friars Head's bunkers. I know I didn't want my ball in the fairway bunker on #2 at Pacific Dunes. So there are places where bunkers still count, but as many have pointed out they are few and far between. Kingsley Club also brings to mind some bunkers that hold your attention.

[Rick Shefchik]

Here in the good old upper Midwest - good farm country; not as good for raising sheep -- whenever we get a heavy rain, the bunkers become rain puddles for up to a day or two afterward. Deepen them, and you deepen you post-downpour puddles.

There are scattered pieces of land around Minnesota that are more sand-based than clay-based, but clay is much more common. I would love to see more deep pot bunkers on the courses I play, but deep bunkers irritate most average players far more than high rough does (you can always take your medicine and get out of the rough), and deep bunkers with ankle-deep water would irritate them that much more.

Where they can be properly built and maintained, I believe pot bunkers ought to be far more prevelant. Where they don't work, I think architects ought to be experimenting with other methods of guarding the fairways and greens. Hard, fast fairways that allow a ball to run into a thick grass bunker would be an interesting alternative.

[MBL]

Outside of the historical aspect, why the issue among GCAers with grass bunkers?  

I play a couple of Keith Foster courses regularly, the grass bunkers are liberally utilized throughout the course(s) and the cabbage in these beasts actually prove much more penal -- as referenced in early posts -- than their grass-bottomed brethren.  At least in the St. Louis area, the sheep would have been/are taking refuge in grassy hollows.  

[TEPaul]

MB:

Keith Foster has some courses that utilize GRASS bunkers liberally that play much more penal than their GRASS bottomed brethren?

This I gotta see! What is Keith, anyway, some sort of expert on all the possible nuances of grass bunkers?

[michael miller]

The advent of high grass at tour sites and its proliferation into the amatuer game is distressing indeed. Apparently, as a measure taken to offset the "long golf ball" of today's technology, long grass, to me, is a scourge.  It not only results in the problems already discussed concerning "bunkers as havens", but leads to other undesirable outcomes as well.
Lost balls, 5 plus hour rounds, slavish conformity to hit fairways, elimination of strategy, loss of chance taking and
the inevitable death of "temptation".  These, just to name a few negative effects. The ball, and the "we must protect par" mind set are the main culprits.  What's next? 8000 yard courses lined by 4" rough? That should make for some real imaginative shotmaking. Not! I pity the architects who must battle the "golf technology terrorists".  Tiger Woods didn't hit a single bunker at St Andrews? Admittedly, there was mild weather, but that is a joke.  

[MBL]

TEPaul-

My bad...in an effort to be overly-clever, meant to say "sand-bottomed".  Apologies.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike Miller,
I would take exception to your allusion that technology had much to do with TW steering clear of the bunkers at TOC.
TW's exceptional course management kept him out of the bunkers at TOC.

As for bunkers in general I like 'em deep and nasty to get out of. I imagine many others don't. If we want to see more like that then it's time to lighten up the rules on bunkers. I think the rules should allow the option of taking relief outside the bunker, using the same guidelines that are used for lateral hazards, but increasing the penalty for removing the ball from the bunker to two strokes. This would allow the less talented to have a finite number to expect if they went into a really nasty hole in the ground whereas now they are so fearful of this type of bunker that no one builds them with any regularity anymore.

Many voices here have bemoaned the loss of the deep bunkers at Yale. The reasons for the changes, at least the ones I've heard, are maintenance issues and playability. If relief could be taken without the loss of yardage the playability issue would become less important and a byproduct of that would be less pressure on the maintenance of them.
It could be bye-bye to the SandPro, hello to smooth 'em over with your foot.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

How many times have I had the discussion concerning depth of fairway bunkers.  Players wanting them 'softer'. Players wanting the lips lower so they they can 'advance' their ball and wanting them moved to the side so as to put them out of play.  With the advent of great irrigation, I am going for the bunkers whenever possible.  That thick northwest rough is thick and uncertain.

I want to thit my three wood out of the fairway bunker on a par 5 too, but did it ever occur to anyone that they shouldn't be there in the first place?  

Another thread has been discussing the loss of strategy in golf design.  In an effort to make golf accesible to all we run the risk of making it boring.  Resort golf may be the worst offender.  Florida's mounds on the right, lake on the left followed by mounds on the left, lake on the right, hardly inspire my architectural juices.  The desert of California has its own level of boredom.  I too often feel as though I am on a Disneyland ride where the golf cart is on tracks and any desire to go a different way is thwarted by the lap belt.  

The good news is that places like this may begin the process of moving Golf course design away from PC.  We have dumbed down the game to the point of near boredom.