Hi Tom,
I'm not sure that our opinions could, would or will carry significant weight, but it's decent of you to solicit them, even for a fun board post. Most of us live in the fantasy world of little drawings, ardent research and the firing of emotional synapses when we play a great hole or great course or observe a great hole in a non-golf course property..."I would like to be the man to provide the world this kind of thing" You operate in the real world, with real pieces of property, real clients and real living commerce - so again, what I would prefer may not be at all practical.
As I considered the original question in your thread-opener, I kept stopping on the phrase from near the end
"Either we architects are going to have to stop trying to do such a good job of making sandy hazards look natural..."
It's not perfectly framed by your question, but I do think the meat of the GCA issue is in there, to the extent that what I - as one individual with an abiding interest in golf and its architectural developments - object to is the subtle validation of the visual as equal to the virtue of the playing field itself.
Yesterday in one of the many threads catalyzed by the PGA finish, i mentioned how bullsh** everyone would feel if Jerry Jones low-hanging scoreboard ever stopped a punt - and altered the exhibition and results of play - in a game. I can only surmise the competing players who had an entire season's work and goals thwarted by a negative outcome. I snickered in that post - 2 billion dollars of Xanadu and they can't get the height of the scoreboard right?
Back to thinking about visuals in golf, specifically making sandy hazards look so good...I offer the opinion that if an architect cannot deploy a layout where the preponderance of rules-defined "hazards" (with their attendant penalty for forbidden conduct in and around them) are also not a part of natural beauty, he or she is either not bringing their best work to bear or the property is not suited for a first rate course.
This is by the way, fine, with me - we need second, third and fourth rate courses, architects need to eat and these enterprises employ and delight a great many people - all very good stuff.
But ideally for me - if a hazard is designed, its designed for playing strategy first and visual properties second. Aesthetic beauty is not designed, it is elicited. it seems to me that when architecture tries hard to design aesthetic, the best results come off as faux and patina.
I say this because an important element of visual aesthetics is oftentimes their incongruity...why did CBM-Raynor-Banks, in all their "Road" hole configurations never put a blind wall or the clubhouse looming in front of the tee or put a wide cart path immediately by the hole or put a stone wall beyond that path or order that a town with the dimensions of St. Andrews shoppes and spires be placed in the further background?
I think they did not because these are things that are called badnesses by most of the golfing world...a blind tee shot over railway sheds? a freakin' Road steps from the green...you'd be laughed out of the business to suggest same today and the liability lawyers would make you tear your hair out. Maybe they are or maybe they are not badnesses - but what appealed to CBM-Raynor-Banks and those of us with an fascination for the original is the damn strategy of it...a courageous leap of faith drive to set up the best angle attack to an oblique green pinched by two wild hazards...a stringent four that is solvable with thoughtful, sound play.
That's the reason the Road template endures and can withstand not having the blind sheds, the road and the wall in most of its copies, and substitute a bunker.
So my answer rounds down to maybe you shouldn't try so hard to make great looking hazards...if their visual quality subordinates or competes for primacy with strategy, they need more thought or something.
yet...
The rules need examination too, because at their heart - hazards are a change of surface, one of the supreme intrinsic attributes (or tests) of Golf. From differing lies in fairways, to flat pebble bunkers to traditional sculpted sand pits to differing qualities of rough and greens and approach grasses - Golf is if nothing else a judgement of the surface on which the ball is to be played on, to and from.
Hazards and obstructions are defined by...their "definition" - eg: "This is a bunker, you see? The grass ends here and then it becomes sand and it is a uniform edge all along its boundary. This is a pond, a brook, a lake a bay, an ocean - there's a water's edge.These are the margins of what's included in those bodies of water as they constitute Hazards under the rules - this one is lateral, painted red and this one is regular - painted yellow. These are margins of the water hazard; this is ground under repair and this is a cart path.
Why must their be such ambiguity in Whistling Straits...and if its virtues necessitate such vice, why doesn't the ambiguity resolve in favor of the competitors - all the stuff outside the ropes in just waste, ground your club all you like. It hardly matters to the execution of the shot and the change of surface test - we, the PGA cannot control these areas and so its unfair to police them with further sanction than their out of play position and obviously random change of surfaces. Good luck to you up there...or there....or there... or there...
I'm a dilettante historian at best, but I assume the reason grounding the club in a sand bunker became a no-no is because players had taken to creating a "ledge" or podium behind their ball with such grounding and this was deemed to thwart the intrinsic test, fairly assessing and executing off the alternate surface. Someone else more knowledgeable than me will probably chime in as to how that was developed, but I can't imagine that the first players just intrinsically said, "Don't touch the ground if you're in sand - it's just wrong."
The salient point for today's question-problem-integration is that if the particular change in surface is ambiguous and rather indistinct from a place called Hazard and usually controlled and well-defined, the are should be granted a liberal deed to be played free of the normal Hazard rules.
Lastly Tom - and thank you again for the solicitation to opine - when you mention a project site being entirely comprised of sandy material, you are designing a course out of what is called Hazard and the bare-bones result is that anything that you don't design is automatically Hazard.
cheers
vk