Geez, with these comments you'd think that golf would never have survived without those rakes.
From The American Golfer, October 1912:
EMASCULATING BUNKERS.
On all the Western courses they have a penchant for raking- bunkers. So much so that in nearly all cases the ball is practically teed. Which utterly defeats the purpose for which a bunker is intended—a penalty for a poor stroke.
At the Chicago Golf Club, just prior to the Olympic team match which preceded the national amateur championship, attention was drawn to this unfairness and accordingly the sand was so raked into small mounds and hollows as to make the playing- of the shot mean something. Of course this aroused considerable resentment. But the Olympic match was started under these new conditions. Before it was half over, however, orders were issued to smooth out all inequalities and restore the surface to its original lovely pristine state, and the novel sight was witnessed, during a medalplay competition, of some of the earlier players vigorously attacking the ball in these billowy surfaces—and just getting out—only to be followed by others playing from the same bunkers, freshly smoothed, and having no trouble at all getting out with ordinary irons, and in some cases wooden clubs, and securing the same distance as though the ball were teed up in the fairway. Which, strictly speaking, rendered the whole competition null and void.
When a bunker permits a player to use a wooden club, or anything except a niblick and by a skillful stroke with the latter only enabling him to get out, that bunker becomes a travesty and fails to accomplish its object.