Courses considered great with fewest bunkers...

[Phil_the_Author]

I contend, and did so on another thread, that a single bunker can make a hole great all on its own. I used the example of the Road Hole. Remove the bunker in front of the green and it is merely a good long par-four. Remove every other bunker and one is stunned by how that single bunker dictates every single shot from tee ball to approach to recovery shots.

In it and any score is possible; it is the death of many a round and championship. Long to avoid it and the "Road Hole" now earns it's name.

With that example, by extension I contend that a golf course with minimal but strategically properly-placed bunkers can be truly great.

So I ask, can anyone name great courses with minimal bunkering?

[Tom_Doak]

Phil:  I agree with your point -- to a point.

However, would the Road bunker be as effective if there was no road behind the green, and no hotel / boundary to keep you from driving out to the right?  It's not really the only hazard on that hole, and similarly, lots of other holes with "only one bunker" rely on other natural defenses.

[Tom_Doak]

P.S.  I think Ballybunion has the fewest bunkers of any top-20 course, but it has dunes and ocean in play also.

[Phil_the_Author]

I agree that both hotel and road are hazards to the hole, but does the hotel dictate the approach shot? Does the road dictate the tee shot? Yet for many, it is that single bunker that does as it defines all angles of play rather than some, and that was my point.

[Mike_Cirba]

The original Cobb's Creek course was considered as the best public golf course in the country from its inception in 1916 until probably the creation of Bethpage Black in the latter 1930's.

It had roughly 20 bunkers upon opening.

[Ally Mcintosh]

The Machrie - 6 bunkers
Carne - 18 bunkers

Depends on your definition of Great I suppose...

[Phil McDade]

I think Augusta National was considered at the time a minimally bunkered course. Fewer than 50?

[Tyler Kearns]

Phil,

I was just going to mention Augusta National. I do think the total number of bunkers originally was more in the 20-25 range.

TK

[Jon Earl]

0 - Royal Ashdown Forest

[David_Tepper]

Isn't the bunker count at AGNC in the 30-35 range?

[Phil McDade]

David:

My rough count from an aerial is 41 -- it's at least 40, but I don't think 50.

[Jed Peters]

Olympic Lake has but one fairway bunker--but quite a few greenside.

Does that count?

[jim_lewis]

Off the top of my head I can think of 35 at Augusta National. I may have overlooked one or two. I'm counting three in the cluster left of the fairway on #3. There may be more.

Cherokee Plantation had 26 the last time I played it. It may not be "great", but in my book it is very good.

[BCrosby]

Lakeside in LA (1927) was noted by almost all contemporary commentators as having very few bunkers and little rough.

Does that remind anyone of another, more famous course? Designed by someone who was among Lakeside's designer's best friends? Could it be that Lakeside's designer had more influence than is usually thought?

Bob

P.S. ANGC had 22 bunkers when it opened.

[Jon Wiggett]

I agree that both hotel and road are hazards to the hole, but does the hotel dictate the approach shot? Does the road dictate the tee shot? Yet for many, it is that single bunker that does as it defines all angles of play rather than some, and that was my point.

Phil,

for me it is the fact that the green is raised and the angle of the green that influence the angle of approach you want to to the green. If the bunker were not there then the shot out of the hollow in which it sits would not be all that much easier. I think Tom D is correct in singling out the road as the flip shot from its surface is really tough to pull off. If the road was a bunker the hole would be much easier to par but if the bunker were a grassy hollow then probably not that much easier. The great thing about the hole is it is a tough 4 but a straight forward 5.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Lakeside in LA (1927) was noted by almost all contemporary commentators as having very few bunkers and little rough.

Does that remind anyone of another, more famous course? Designed by someone who was among Lakeside's designer's best friends? Could it be that Lakeside's designer had more influence than is usually thought?

Bob

P.S. ANGC had 22 bunkers when it opened.

It was wide, too, wasn't it?  Depressingly little on the architecture BTW in "The Mysterious Montague," wherein Lakeside is the prime setting.

Yale has 37 or thereabouts.

[Andy Troeger]

It will be interesting to see how Jim Engh's new Four Mile Ranch in Colorado is received. It has no bunkers but many native areas and natural contours that more than make up for them. I don't know how it compares to the courses being discussed, but its very good in its own right.

[BCrosby]

Mark -

I'm starting to think that both Lakeside and Pasa were far more influential golf courses than is usually appreciated. They didn't get the kudos of Riviera or Cypress or SFGC (they still don't), but in the grand scheme of things they might have had a bigger impact and remain historically more signifcant.

They were both edgey designs in a way very few Golden Age courses were.

Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

Bob, Mark -

A topic/thread all its own, I know, but can you explore a little more the "impact" those courses by Behr and Mackenzie had. Even with the little I know, I'd easily grant them the "historical significance" bit, but I'm not sure of their impact -- other than as a pivot point around which most of architecture turned away.

Peter

[BCrosby]

Peter -

My notion of "impact" is pretty limited. It's about those courses serving as antecedents to ANGC, Crystal Downs, Rancho Sante Fe and some other late Golden Age courses. Lakeside and Pasa (Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath probably ought to be added), I think, pointed the way to those courses and the direction gca might have taken but for the deep, twenty year slumber the profession entered in 1932. When people awoke from that slumber, you had a new set of architects, new economic conditions and a very different popular mindset. So whatever impact they once had, ended at that point. (The "minimalist" movement in the last 15 or so years revived some of their impact, imho.)

So I'm not trying to make broad, sweeping claims for "impact" here. There is no question, however, that those courses were and are underappreciated in the history of gca.

Bob 

[Mark Bourgeois]

Peter

I sure am not the right person to answer that question!

Bob

Good word choice of "antecedent." I used to think of ANGC as culmination or perfecting of MacKenzie's ideas but now think he got a set of themes (or "principles") into his head early on and like an artist in the grip of an idee fixe just hammered away at them again and again.  You can see them starting at Alwoodley and all the way through the first courses he designed on three other continents: Royal Melbourne, Meadow Club, Jockey Club.

So I have no idea of the impact, although:
1924 Lakeside opens
1926 MacKenzie in Oz
1927 Meadow Club opens

Perhaps Lakeside influenced MacKenzie -- except Mac's ideas predated 1924, and furthermore many seem to predate his meeting Behr.  (For example I think MacKenzie wrote of the importance of "finality" in design as early as 1913.)  The idee fixe was The Old Course and you can see that course embodied in his principles and pre-1924 designs, right back to Alwoodley and Moortown.

Probably all of this was more a meeting of the minds, with each mind perhaps offering subtly different interpretations of commonly-held principles.

Sorry can't be more helpful,
Mark

[mike_beene]

The Ocean Course.No bunkers but not a fair answer to the spirit of the question.Pinehurst 2 has very few bunkers that are really important to the course.In other words,take them all out and does Pinehurst 2 really change?

[PCCraig]

The question I would have is does a hole need bunkers in the fairway landing area to be considered hard, good, great?

I would say that I enjoy it more when the bunkers around the greens dictate where I should be in the fairway for my approach.

[Sean_A]

Peter

I sure am not the right person to answer that question!

Bob

Good word choice of "antecedent." I used to think of ANGC as culmination or perfecting of MacKenzie's ideas but now think he got a set of themes (or "principles") into his head early on and like an artist in the grip of an idee fixe just hammered away at them again and again.  You can see them starting at Alwoodley and all the way through the first courses he designed on three other continents: Royal Melbourne, Meadow Club, Jockey Club.

So I have no idea of the impact, although:
1924 Lakeside opens
1926 MacKenzie in Oz
1927 Meadow Club opens

Perhaps Lakeside influenced MacKenzie -- except Mac's ideas predated 1924, and furthermore many seem to predate his meeting Behr.  (For example I think MacKenzie wrote of the importance of "finality" in design as early as 1913.)  The idee fixe was The Old Course and you can see that course embodied in his principles and pre-1924 designs, right back to Alwoodley and Moortown.

Probably all of this was more a meeting of the minds, with each mind perhaps offering subtly different interpretations of commonly-held principles.

Sorry can't be more helpful,
Mark

Mark

I always thought of AGNC as somewhat of a radical change of direction in design for Dr Mac - maybe signaling a different approach for the future.  He used very few bunkers and the property strikes me as about the hilliest (in terms of quick up and downs) he worked on compared to other well known courses of his.  I can see the relationship between the OZ courses and the California courses, but ANGC seems to stand alone.  However, its probably fair to say Dr Mac would have used his experience from early years with building courses on hilly sites for ANGC. 

I would like somebody to explain to me how ANGC is meant to be the American embodiment of TOC.  I have never quite understood this as the two courses don't strike me as being similar.  I know folks site the idea of width, but I wouldn't have thought this to be an unusual design characteristic back in the day. 

To answer the question, I think there are plenty of great courses with very few bunkers.  However, nearly all of them rely on a dynamic piece of land.  The one exception I can think of of-hand is Huntercombe.  Many will likely debate if Huntercombe is a great course, but of this I have no doubt.  For a fairly flat site, Huntercombe has the most interesting interplay between the hollows, lay of the land, the odd bunker and the sloping of greens.  It really is a sight to behold how so much was accomplished in such a low key manner.

Ciao

[TEPaul]

"So I'm not trying to make broad, sweeping claims for "impact" here. There is no question, however, that those courses were and are underappreciated in the history of gca."


Bob:

I don't know that trying to establish the "impact" of a possible new and different philosophy of architecture and what else it could be from the minds of Behr and seemingly Mackenzie and perhaps Bob Jones is the point or even that it was underappreciated. The historical fact is to a large extent it may've been almost entirely misunderstood or even largely just missed. The reasons for that alone are interesting, I think. It may've been as much bad timing as anything else. The interesting and important thing for us on here to consider is they were definitely trying to say something and it appears it was very important----probably very fundamental actually.

It seems to me they may've been searching for some way via quite different arrangments and concentrations in architecture to better accommodate the entire realm of the less good golfer without giving up some pretty interesting risk/reward arrangements to test the best.

If one really thinks about it THIS is pretty much the ideal----the entire spectrum, as it were.

However, it seems like one of the major obstacles they had to tackle in the explanation and promotion of their new and different ideas was the entire propect of how most any golfer seemed to look at the idea of penalty and what-all it should be for any particular shot or strategy. The fact is Behr, at least, looked upon the prospect of penalty as a potential inspiration to the golfer while most all golfers may look upon the prospect of penalty as some inevitable penance for not doing what he intended to do.