Eighteen Bunkers

[Kyle Harris]

You're the designer of a new golf course on terrain of your choosing. The owner/client has given you the limitation that the golf course can only contain eighteen discrete bunkers; the size and location of which are under your complete control. Construction cost is not a limiting factor but the owner wants green fees to be under $100 during the peak season weekend rate (so don't get too out of hand with size).

How do you design and use the bunkers?

First Hole: 390 yards, one bunker placed such that a 270 yard shot from the back tee will carry. Dogleg right with the bunker placed at the turn point. Shots successfully carrying the bunker will turbo boost to the base of a valley in front of the green. (Think First Hole on Bethpage Yellow, for those familiar) Shots carrying the bunker by a significant margin must be shaped with a sufficient left to right curve to hold the fairway. Play well out to the left is possible for a longer approach to a green perched a top a far knuckle.

Second Hole: 420 yards, slightly up hill, no bunkers, large green

Third Hole: 320 yards, drive and pitch hole. Fairway is fairly flat before terminating forty yards from the putting green. Small green is perched ten feet above fairway with large bunker gouged in front covering the majority of the forty yards between fairway and putting green. Bunker extends the width of the fairway (another roughly forty yards).

Fourth Hole: 170 yards, one-two club uphill to a large, sloping green. Bunker right curls around the front third of the putting surface, fairway approach along the remainder of the front and entire left side. Putting surface rolls into approach, bunker has steep, half-flashed banks. Forward tees staggered to the left such that the two most forward present the approach of the green with no bunker hindrance.

Fifth Hole: 560 yards, great hazard area 340-400 yards out. Tees staggered such that a well-played drive for the skill level will have no issue attacking the great hazard area. Mid sized green with open approach and some undulation to allow for aggressive recovery play.

More to come after more coffee!

Your examples?

[Mark McKeever]

How many everyday golfers do you expect to carry a bunker 270 yards out on the first tee?  Let alone by a "significant margin"?

Mark

[Kyle Harris]

How many everyday golfers do you expect to carry a bunker 270 yards out on the first tee?  Let alone by a "significant margin"?

Mark

How many every day golfers are playing from the back tees? My idea is the negate the distance advantage by requiring significant skill in applying it. The short hitters have room to the left to play with little in the way of a distance penalty. I think one of the clear advantages of the 380-400 yard hole is that short hitters can bunt around and still hit tenable shots. A well-designed hole of this distance will place a premium on longer hitters pressing their advantage.

[Mark McKeever]

What would your carry be from the regular tees then?

Mark

[Kyle Harris]

What would your carry be from the regular tees then?

Mark

240. I believe there needs to be some separation of skill here. A player that can consistently carry the ball 240 should have at least one chance to use that skill against a player that can only consistently carry the ball 220.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Kyle - Exactly not what you are suggesting. Just let the land dictate what holes are and come out, select bunkering per hole as fits and if its more than 18 grass these least appropriate.

Far too much nonsense is put on 270 from the tee... what tee, back tee front tee, what about the wind what about the heat, just allow them to be in lay some day out of play some day. It is not so exact.

[Mark McKeever]

Adrian,

Just trying to have a discussion here...

Mark

[Kyle Harris]

Kyle - Exactly not what you are suggesting. Just let the land dictate what holes are and come out, select bunkering per hole as fits and if its more than 18 grass these least appropriate.

Far too much nonsense is put on 270 from the tee... what tee, back tee front tee, what about the wind what about the heat, just allow them to be in lay some day out of play some day. It is not so exact.

Agreed. To a point. Should the land suggest a bunker, I think it's a trivial matter to build a tee that allows for any desired yardage - indeed, part of the art is hiding the fact that the tee is a contrivance of man and not a product of nature. Since tees are one of the two artificial constructs required by the game (the hole being the other), I think there is plenty of middle ground between our ideas.

It just so happens that carry is a way to quantify and describe the shot concept. I like your methodology of design - but I think as an exercise it would need some form of topo. I'm not well-versed in the methods use by Charlie Georges for the GCA Armchair Architect contests, but perhaps would could be done along those lines with the limitations in place?

[PThomas]

couldnt say until I saw the land for the course and did a routing

[Tim Nugent]

How do you correlate the Size of the bunker to the maintenance cost? If I had 18 pot bunkers that had to be maintained by hand, that would be more expensive than 18 shallow ribbon bunkers that could be quickly machine raked.  Or high, sand faced bunkers vs frying pan sand with grass faces.  At $100/rnd, bunker maintenance cost is not the driving factor.
BTW, we did a course that had a 4.5 acre bunker.  It came into play on 4 holes. It was also pretty easy to maintain because it's size allowed for a large, tractor driven dragmat setup that was about 3 sand pros wide.
However, I do believe that a quality course could be achieved under such parameters. But, it is hard to look at the spectrum of Hazards and just single out one form.  We also have streams, burns, ponds, lakes, trees, ravines, etc.to consider.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Kyle- If you look at fairway bunkering or hazards on the original courses, somedays you could not drive to them, sometimes way past them , outside factors  can cause a (+/-50 yard)100 yard range so a singular bunker reallly starts to lose its merit somedays. This is often the reason we see three or so bunkers sort of doing the job. I think the concept of a small number of bunkers is a good one and I like greens that defend themselves without sand. I think when your only putting a few in and you then  stick numbers on them I dont think the concept will work. Perhaps you could design a course initially with 72 bunkers and then select your most important 18 and perhaps that is an excercise you could do on any course.

[Tim Nugent]

Adrain, I'd like to add that many times bunkers need other bunkers to play off of in order to achieve the requsite defense. ie the one on the inside of the hole needs it's counterpart on the outside, or the one on the left of the right of the green needs the left fairway bunkers to set the preferred angle.

[Morgan Clawson]

With these restrictions, I doubt that I would have more than 1 fairway bunker on the whole course.  If you have too many greens without bunkers the course will start to look cheap to a lot of golfers.  Most greens have at least 1 bunker and if you stray too far from that it would get you in trouble from a perception stand point. Also, it's easier to come-up with fairway hazards to test golfers off the tee. Trees, rough, mounds, ponds, native areas and doglegs are all possible on a lot of holes.

Question:  which notable courses have the fewest numer of bunkers?

[Philippe Binette]

Augusta National had 22 bunkers to start... now around 40

Kyle, I understand what you want to say but if I had 18 bunkers on a course, the last thing I would want is a repetitive pattern on the distance from the tee.

I think your line:  "the tee is a contrivance of man and not a product of nature" could probably lead to the best debate on GCA.com since a long time.

Is the tee a contrivance of man ?

Maybe 90% of the time but a lot of great holes start with a unique spot for the tee. The problem is that you can't make everybody play from that location. I always felt the positionning of tees was underrated in design and funny enough, it's a spot that determines the hole.

It's crazy what you can do to a hole moving the tee left of right by 10 yards.


As for the course with 18 bunkers, depending on the land but I'd probably have something like:
4 - 5 fairway bunkers
3 - 4 approach bunkers (withing 25 yards or so of the front of the green)
around 8 - 10 greenside bunkers

but I'd rely on some natural features inspired by the site to protect the greens or make the tee shots fun.

[Adrian_Stiff]

With these restrictions, I doubt that I would have more than 1 fairway bunker on the whole course.  If you have too many greens without bunkers the course will start to look cheap to a lot of golfers.  Most greens have at least 1 bunker and if you stray too far from that it would get you in trouble from a perception stand point. Also, it's easier to come-up with fairway hazards to test golfers off the tee. Trees, rough, mounds, ponds, native areas and doglegs are all possible on a lot of holes.

Question:  which notable courses have the fewest numer of bunkers?

Tim - I agree 100%.
Morgan - I think you can have great greens without bunkers, at my course only 3 of the first 8 holes have greenside bunkers, no one ever mentions it, but equally you need something going on. There are 6 greens without bunkers. Burnham & Berrow must have 8 or 9 as well and no one mentions that.
Last year I completed a golf course and the brief was pretty much as few bunkers as possible, we have started adding a few more already. 8 greens are bunkerless but I think it will end up being 5 possibly 4, I think we will end up around 25 bunkers for the course.

[Gary Slatter]

One per par three, one per par five (short of the greens) and balance in the fairways on par fours.

[Sean_A]

Well, with only 18 bunkers I think centre-line placement and interesting greens becomes ever important. The use of hollows and humps would also be handy.  I also think creating less par 5s and more par 3s is very helpful to hide a lack of sand due to less yardage.  My first move would be to identify the holes which don't need sand and that has to be likely 5ish.  I would probably also want a flourish of bunkers on at least one hole - likely a par 3.  After that it is hard to say. 

Ciao

[Jason Topp]

Look up the original bunkering at Augusta National and take a couple out.

[John Kavanaugh]

couldnt say until I saw the land for the course and did a routing

Really, is that in your wheelhouse?

[Garland Bayley]

I think this works.



Testimonial:

Mr. Sturges

I grew up playing a Bill Diddel design (Beechwood G.C.) nearly every day during the season.  It was a WPA project built in the early 1930's in LaPorte, Indiana.  It is still there today and is a 'classic' parksland layout.  I have gone on to play many courses in the top 100 and still feel Beechwood is in my top 15.  I get back once a year and never miss the opportunity to play.  I actually think it was the 5th ranked public track in Indiana in 1990.  It may have fallen with new openings, but it is a solid golf course.

During a time of his career, Bill Diddel was interested in creating challenging and interesting golf courses without bunkers.

If you want to learn more, you might try

http://billdiddel.com/index.htm

and

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,34005.0.html

[Kyle Harris]

I like a lot of the responses so far, but how about how the bunker(s) are used on one hole to emphasize a certain shot, and how does the need to use two bunkers on one hole off-set the need to give up a bunker on another in terms of design and shot values? Within the routing, when does the more bunkered hole get presented?

For example, the traditional "strategic" model hole of bunker right at landing area bunker left at green would necessitate a bunkerless hole somewhere else in the routing.

Do shorter holes lend themselves to being more heavily bunkered than longer holes?

Phillipe:

Honored you'd like to discuss the statement. I think tee placement, especially as it relates to the previous green is one of the most essentially areas of critique when discussing and analyzing a golf course. I've said this on here in the past, but how the architect using the ground between the putting green and the next tee contain some of the most important decisions made on the design.

[Kyle Harris]

Kyle- If you look at fairway bunkering or hazards on the original courses, somedays you could not drive to them, sometimes way past them , outside factors  can cause a (+/-50 yard)100 yard range so a singular bunker reallly starts to lose its merit somedays. This is often the reason we see three or so bunkers sort of doing the job. I think the concept of a small number of bunkers is a good one and I like greens that defend themselves without sand. I think when your only putting a few in and you then  stick numbers on them I dont think the concept will work. Perhaps you could design a course initially with 72 bunkers and then select your most important 18 and perhaps that is an excercise you could do on any course.

This is an interesting premise.

I feel your model, however, precludes any designed flexibility in the set up. A clever superintendent could set up the golf course to best take advantage of the conditions for that day. While a 270 yard carry (or however long) is designed as a possibility, the tee blocks could be moved forward to accommodate differences in wind direction, etc.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Kyle- If you look at fairway bunkering or hazards on the original courses, somedays you could not drive to them, sometimes way past them , outside factors  can cause a (+/-50 yard)100 yard range so a singular bunker reallly starts to lose its merit somedays. This is often the reason we see three or so bunkers sort of doing the job. I think the concept of a small number of bunkers is a good one and I like greens that defend themselves without sand. I think when your only putting a few in and you then  stick numbers on them I dont think the concept will work. Perhaps you could design a course initially with 72 bunkers and then select your most important 18 and perhaps that is an excercise you could do on any course.

This is an interesting premise.

I feel your model, however, precludes any designed flexibility in the set up. A clever superintendent could set up the golf course to best take advantage of the conditions for that day. While a 270 yard carry (or however long) is designed as a possibility, the tee blocks could be moved forward to accommodate differences in wind direction, etc.

Kyle that only really works if everyone hits it the same off the tee and even clever superintendents can't be that clever.

[Sean_A]

Kyle

I think a relatively small percentage (maybe 50% if not less) of well placed bunkers will come into direct play on a daily basis for any given player.  It is a glorious thing to have bunkers out of play one day and in play the next.  It keeps the course fresh and the player thinking.

Ciao

[John Kavanaugh]

A clever super is like a clever chef, best saved for special occasions.