Beale and Bunkering - 1909

[Tom MacWood]

This is a serious inquiry because whereas in other instances where we see flashed sand on sandy sites, the builder is only exposing what is already there, but the Merion bunkers were built to hold sand on an upslope.

I take it you have not seen Mackenzie's raised bunkers at Alwoodley and Moortown. Those courses were built on what I believe is considered a moorland site.

[TEPaul]

"Flashed bunkers were common place in Britain and America, seaside and inland. Why is it so significant when the first flashed bunker appeared on a clay loam site? Isn't the more important question when did the first flashed bunker appear on an inland course?"




With that statement and those questions you must be missing most of the question and points of this thread.

Flashed sand bunkers were commonplace on all the earliest linksland and seaside courses because, as Hugh Wilson mentioned in that paragraph posted above, they were not made by man but were naturally occuring. He also mentioned where those naturally occuring bunkers on linksland or seaside courses collapsed railroad ties were used to support them that created vertical faces on the those otherwise natural bunkers.

In almost all cases back then linksland and seaside sites were extremely sandy or sand with very light loam, and in almost all cases the early inland sites were hard clay/loam dirt soils with no natural sand. Obviously there were some exceptions such as the INLAND English heathlands that remarkably had a soil makeup and structure very similar to the linksland and seaside soils of primarily sand or sandy/light loam. This was also the case with the INLAND Pine Valley.

The point of all this is that to make bunkers and bunker shapes on sand to sandy/light loam soils is remarkably easy compared to hard packed clay/loam sites-----eg one just easily molds the light sandy/loam into a bunker cavity and essentially uses that naturally existig material as a sand bunker without even having to import sand for the bunker floors.

On hard packed clay/loam sites like Merion that were generally former meadows of farmland the material was far more difficult to work with to make bunkers and consequently most all of them originally were straight-sided earthen faces and vertically walled like that which is before so many earthen steeplechase jumps and the old fashioned rectangular sunken flat floors of the old cop and geometric bunkers (something akin to earthen formations for coffins .

This is why some of us are wondering if Wilson and Merion was the first of the INLAND clay/loam hard packed earthen site architects who began to make bunkers which had gradually upsweeping earthen faced bunkers before the IMPORTED sand was placed in them and flashed all the way up to the top of the bunker that had no more than a very light band of grass around the top.

This has everything to do with the light (sand or sandy/loam) to hard (clay to clay/loam) soil and ground characteristics of the pre-existing sites back then both in Great Britain and America. Those were the stark differences those early architects were facing between different types of sites and their very different soil makeups. Frankly the light to hard soil characteristics of various sites is most of what the entire chapter sequencing of Hutchinson's book "Golf Greens and Greenskeeping" is all about.    

[Kyle Harris]

Flashed bunkers were common place in Britain and America, seaside and inland. Why is it so significant when the first flashed bunker appeared on a clay loam site? Isn't the more important question when did the first flashed bunker appear on an inland course?

At that time what were the best courses built on clay loam in America and Britain?

Have you ever tried to build one on clay loam?

Please list the step by step process on how to build a sustainable, maintainable bunker at the lowest cost and lowest need for maintenance.

Also, please define the nature of the hazard and how construction of the bunker influences the impact of the bunker on play.

[Tom MacWood]

Kyle
Flashed bunkers were common in Britain and America, seaside and inland, under varying soil conditions (links, moorland, downs, heathland, parkland, forest, chalk, gravel, etc). I've never built any bunker anywhere perhaps you could explain why it was such a significant breakthrough. You would think if it were so significant you would not be having so much difficulty trying to determine when and where this breakthrough took place.

What soil type was Stoke Poges?

[TEPaul]

"Flashed bunkers were common in Britain and America, seaside and inland, under varying soil conditions (links, moorland, downs, heathland, parkland, forest, chalk, gravel, etc)."


If bunkers with fairly long and gradual upswept faces sand flashed to the top were common in Britain and America on heavy clay/loam (which was the vast majority of the soils structure of INLAND former meadowland/farmland sites) prior to Merion East then just point out the examples of where they were so common on heavy clay/loam sites in Britain and America prior to Merion East.

I see no point at all for you or anyone else to complicate this question and subject. If you can't point out any in Britain and America on heavy clay/loam sites prior to Merion East then one should assume the question is still open if Merion's were the first on that type of difficult material to work with to form bunker cavities with upswept earthen faces before imported sand was installed.

[Bradley Anderson]

This is a serious inquiry because whereas in other instances where we see flashed sand on sandy sites, the builder is only exposing what is already there, but the Merion bunkers were built to hold sand on an upslope.

I take it you have not seen Mackenzie's raised bunkers at Alwoodley and Moortown. Those courses were built on what I believe is considered a moorland site.

Mr. MacWood,

I said somewhere else on this subject that I think those were among the first man-made upswept bunkers.

[Tom MacWood]

"Flashed bunkers were common in Britain and America, seaside and inland, under varying soil conditions (links, moorland, downs, heathland, parkland, forest, chalk, gravel, etc)."


If bunkers with fairly long and gradual upswept faces sand flashed to the top were common in Britain and America on heavy clay/loam (which was the vast majority of the soils structure of INLAND former meadowland/farmland sites) prior to Merion East then just point out the examples of where they were so common on heavy clay/loam sites in Britain and America prior to Merion East.

At the time flashed bunkers were common in Britain and America and Europe and elsewhere: Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Coombe Hill, Stoke Poges, Swinley Forest, Alwoodley, Moortown, Ganton, Eden, Old Elm, Ekwanok, NGLA, Worplesdon, Havanah, Harrogate, Sitwell Park, Valliere, and Sandy Lodge to name a few. I'll let you figure out which of these were on clay loam or why we should even care. Again please explain why it is significant which was the first course on clay loam when that bunker type was common place. And shouldn't you first try to pin point exactly when flashed bunkers were introduced at Merion before making these historic proclamations. You've got the cart ahead of the horse.

[TEPaul]

Gradually upsweeping flashed sand faces were common on golf courses in Britain and America that were sand/sandy loam (or light soil) sites before Merion East. No one is denying or questioning that and the photographic evidence of it is plentiful. Matter of fact, the original natural bunker formations on sandy linksland type sites were gradually upsweeping, as Wilson pointed out in his paragraph above, because they were created only by nature, not man.

When gradually upsweeping bunker faces created by earthen cavities first happened on compacted dirt (clay/loam) sites that had no natural sand is the question and I have not yet been able to find photographic examples of gradually upswept sand flashed faces that were essentially created by gradually upsweeping earthen cavities on clay/loam soils before Merion East. I'm not saying they didn't exist----just that I can't see any examples of them yet before particularly the fairway bunkers of Merion East.

Matter of fact, it appears on sandy sites such as NGLA and Pine Valley the original upswept sand faces were just the natural material of those sites and no sand needed to be imported for the sand floors of their bunker----definitely not the case with a clay/loam inland meadowland/farmland site like Merion.

There seems to be another irony here----eg if the sand faces on bunkers of sand and sandy/loam (light sandy soil) sites like a Pine Valley or NGLA got too vertical or perpindicular (which they occasionally did) they would collapse or slide thereby often necessitating maintenance fixes utilizing such things as railroad ties and sleepers or the breaking up of those sand upsweeps into smaller formalized bunkers with sod surrounding them or above them for stability. That kind of thing was clearly not necessary on compacted dirt clay/loam inland sites such as Merion----one could far more easily utilize trench-like bunkers (cop bunkers and such) on sites that had that kind of natural hard packed material. It was frankly no different on those compacted clay/loam sites than the rectangular earthen trenches in front of steeplechase berms!

But if someone does not see what difference clay/loam sites vs sand/sandy loam sites made to those men back then creating man-made architecture or which were which or why anyone today should care, that is just fine with me. I care because I think those men working with those vastly different materials and consequently vastly different types of sites back then to create various types of man-made architecture cared a whole lot because they had to---they were basically forced to care.

Was Hugh Wilson the first to create such gradual earthen upswept angles on the faces of particularly his fairway bunkers (before installing sand)? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't but as yet I have not found any photographs or evidence of such gently upswept faces on any compacted soil (clay/loam) inland site before the fairway bunkers of Merion East.

We have a lot of courses mentioned in the post above. The first question is which of them had heavy compacted clay/loam soil like Merion AND which of them had such gradual upswept sand faces on their fairway bunkers (with no earthen/grass rampart above them) as Merion did? To answer the question of whether or not Merion was the first course this way both of those questions must be answered first.

If one goes back and reads Wilson's paragraph on bunkers posted in Post #3 one may find another contributing reason why he and Merion may've come up with this novel idea on hard-packed clay/loam sites (or even on sand sites that used railroad ties and sleepers)! It may've been driven by his (and particularly Richard Francis's) frustration with a particular aspect of the Rules of Golf----the very same Rules aspect with bunkers that interestingly still exists today (can anyone actually guess what that is? ). It may've had something important to do with the fact that Wilson figured out an interesting architectural way to deal with that frustrating Rules aspect and problem to do with bunkers, particularly fairway bunkers!

Again, if one carefully reads ALL of what he referred to on his unpublished paragraph (above) on bunkers it would certainly seem so.

[Tom MacWood]

Wilson called the soil at Merion clay loam. On your second to last post you've upgraded it to heavy clay loam, and now on your most recent post its hard packed clay loam. At this rate it will soon be heavy hard packed concrete loam.

[TEPaul]

It doesn't exactly matter what Wilson called the soil and soil makeup of Merion East----all that matters is what it essentially is (compared to linksland or heath land naturally occuring material and the naturally occuring material on sites such as NGLA or Pine Valley) because I can guarantee you it hadn't changed much for probably a couple of thousand years before the course was built nor is it likely to change much in the next couple of thousand years? 

What might be additionally interesting, however, is what C.B. Macdonald called it and how he described it---both in 1910 and 1911----unless of course you really don't see why "we" should care what Macdonald said or thought about Merion. That would be an interesting variation for you at this point for sure but I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility or likely response.   

[TEPaul]

I've spoken to a few about it and they seem interested in considering the potential importance of it, but I would encourage anyone interested to carefully read Wilson's paragraph on bunkers posted on Post #3 and carefully consider why it might have been that he punctuated his remarks on the construction of bunkers in that paragraph on an apparent concern with the Rules of Golf on bunkers.

If you even mildly understand where he was coming from on his apparent Rules concern, I should remind you what it was that seemed to concern him still very much exists today (even though it seems some of the Rules administrators and thinkers have recently thought about perhaps alleviating this basic situation in perhaps a "like situations shall be treated alike" context).

He was the one who mentioned this Rules concern regarding bunkers, not me, and as far as I can see he may've been almost the only one who expressed this kind of Rules concern to do with the architecture of some bunkers. The question is, did he decide to resolve the potential problem in the way he uniquely recommended constructing bunkers, particularly fairway bunkers?

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

I know you explained the particular rules concerns around bunkers on the phone to me the other day, but I think perhaps it might be worth spelling it out here in more detail as I had never thought of it much before (I'm certainly not a rules guy...more a find it and hit it again guy), but it is an interesting distinction that I think others might enjoy hearing and discussing as well.

I certainly can't explain it half as well as you did.   Thanks.

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
I know you explained the particular rules concerns around bunkers on the phone to me the other day, but I think perhaps it might be worth spelling it out here in more detail as I had never thought of it much before (I'm certainly not a rules guy...more a find it and hit it again guy), but it is an interesting distinction that I think others might enjoy hearing and discussing as well."


Mike:

I'll consider doing that but I think I would really have to think hard about it and how exactly to explain it because we aren't really talking about some concern I've had about how relief rules work with hazards and particularly bunkers but how Wilson seemingly thought they worked, or should work, at the time he wrote that regarding bunkers.

For instance, I was explaining to you on the phone the other day a seeming inconsistency in "hazard" relief of something called "regression" which happens to be available in certain circumstances from a water hazard but not a bunker----eg again both being defined as a "hazard" (and both being all that is defined as a "hazard"). On some reflection, I am not even certain if "regression" existed in Hugh Wilson's day or when he wrote what I posted from him above.

To even begin to explain it all effectively it probably needs to be explained how the Rules of Golf have changed (and perhaps a lot) in this regard over the years as much "definitionally" as anything else.

For example, what many of the old Rules of Golf (first as used by individual clubs and later as unified and administered by first the R&A and then the R&A and USGA) essentially had a whole laundry list of things they considered to be "hazards" from which one could take relief but always apparently with a loss of a stroke that today we know as "Obstructions" under the Rules of Golf and from which we can often take "free" relief. It is beginning to occur to me that even if "relief" (to be able to put your hands on the golf ball and move it) was very prevalent in the old days being able to do it free of a stroke or more penalty was very rare if it even existed back then.

Today, those old fashioned laundry lists of what were considered to be "hazards" under many of the old Rules of Golf are now honed down into a Rules definition for a "Hazard" of just two things---ie a "water hazard" and a "bunker." I think this last definition of what is considered to be a "hazard" in the Rules essentially emanates from that famous Rules unification conference in 1951-52 between the R&A and USGA.

PS:
By the way, I just started a separate thread on this general subject entitled "How and how much have the Rules of Golf Affected Golf Architecture?"

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