"Is that necessarily a defect, Tom? I understand the attraction of holes being bunkerless, if the land lends itself to it and does not need it per se. But to purposely do it for the sake of not having bunkers seems going overboard as much as an architect that uses too many of them. Most of the great courses are built on sand based soil, and therefore the bunker is an appropriate hazard. I have to agree with Coore on his assesment."
DavidS:
No, I don't think it's a defect at all to have sand bunkering on sites that have never had natural sand within hundreds of miles of their site. On the other hand, I do not necessarily think it's a defect if some courses don't have sand bunkering, given various aspects, ramifications and situations of particular sites (preconstruction).
But I do understand Max Behr's point. I don’t believe he felt sand bunkering on sites that had no natural sand was in any way a defect either, and he said so rather explicitly;
“It seems to me, however, that if architects are right in their contention that no course should appear other than the result of nature, and that such a contention carried to its logical conclusion must result in the ridiculous, we have taken the word Nature too literally. The very fact that sand must be used in locations to which it is not indigenous, together with the civilized aspect of such distinguishing features as the greens, tees and fairgreen, must qualify such a precise understanding of the word (Nature).”
“Naturalness in Golf Architecture,” Max Behr
When Behr implied in one of his essays that sand bunkering on sites that had no indigenous sand but nevertheless used imported sand and that sand bunkering was therefore a sort of an odd vestige of original linksland golf that hung on with all golf architecture he was merely making a point by tracking the history and evolution of golf course architecture back to the original linksland in Scotland and then tracking it forward when it first began to emigrate out of Scotland to inland sites which Behr claimed were ill suited to golf and architecture (and golf’s natural linksland agronomy).
However, and somewhat despite what Behr said above (in fairness to Behr we must recognize WHEN he wrote that) it is apparently true that when golf and architecture first emigrated out of Scotland to inland sites sand bunkering was generally not used. Therefore, we should probably ask ourselves both WHEN it first came to be used prevalently on almost every single golf course in the world, and, in my opinion at least, WHY it came to be used on almost every golf course in the world!