Bunkers as a Hazard

[Niall C]

Franks thread on Colt bunkers got me thinking that the way that bunkers are built probably has a lot to do with stability and maintenance which in turn are dictated by the needs of identifying the boundary of what is a hazard. What if we went back to the old cross-country style of golf where there was no formal bunkering, just sandy wastes and what was referred to as broken ground ?

Presumably we would have to do away with bunkers as a hazard which perhaps wouldn't be a bad thing. When did "bunkers" become hazards and the rule established that you can't ground the club unless in the act of striking the ball ? If you did away with that rule you wouldn't have to define the bunker and therefore the gca/greenkeeper would be free to design/maintain however he wanted. With that there would be no need to guarantee uniformity of sand, depth of sand and all that sort of stuff that. Transition areas would be more blurred, clumps of grass would grow in bunkers, the sand would get caked and hard, all making it more varied and enjoyable (at least for me !)

And while I'm at it, credit to Castle Stuart who I have been giving a bit of a gentle kicking to on other threads, for partially adhering to this by encouraging it on some of the bunkering there but not yet all through the green.

Thoughts ?

Niall

[Tony Ristola]

Blasphemy.
Heretic.
 ...LOL

They did this during the Ryder Cup at Kiawah. It wouldn't bother me in the least, and as you note, it might ease the mind towards maintaining perfect hazards.

No reason clubs couldn't do it. If the club is decent it might cause a wee bit of discussion. Not a bad thing at all.

[Andy Stamm]

Is there any reason that a course couldn't self-define all of its bunkers as not hazards, but waste areas? We see tons of examples where the line is pretty blurred, so I don't think it would necessarily require a rule change. It seems that right now you just write on the card "the area to the left of the 15th fairway is a waste area" and viola there's no hazard and it's trough the green. So just write that there are no bunkers on the course, and all sandy areas are played through the green.

It would require a change in culture or mindset. I imagine if a course did that it would be viewed very negatively as just lacking maintenance.

I've always found the rules about bunkers such as not grounding the club but raking after the shot very odd.

[Anthony Gray]

  I think Castle Stuart got it right.

 Anthony

[Jon Wiggett]

No Andy,

there is no reason but that of player pressure. Funnily enough if somewhere like the Masters were to go for not raking the bunkers I bet many golfers would find this 'cool' and like to play the odd course with it. One of golfs great advantages compared to many sports is that every place that you play it is different. What the expectation of modern maintenance practice is pushing for a uniformity of playing surfaces which goes against this. This is all driven by the Tour and amatuers thinking what Mr. Woods and his collegues do bears some relevence to their own game.

I for one think a return to infrequently or even unraked bunkers would be a good thing.

Niall,

to answer some of your question, yes going back to random bunkering would be a good thing especially on links courses.On of the things that I really liked about Moray Old was the number of bunker (just about all grass) that were obviously from previous routing but still were in play. Most of them would not be built on a modern course.

Jon

[Andy Stamm]

I think the fine beach sand of links courses would do wonderfully well unmaintained. I think you find a lot of very playable lies, more than in American style bunkers anyway. And, from many links pot bunkers you're just pitching out anyway, so it wouldn't necessarily cause a dramatic change in the 'penalty' for finding them.

[Jim Sherma]

Andy - as I read down to the thread and got to your post you beat me to it. Most bunkers I play in Pennsylvania would not allow an unraked difficult but playable lie but rather many completely unplayable lies as the sand does not flow back into footprints the way it does on the links of Scotland and Ireland that I've played. The difference between the half shot or so penalty with links type sand and a one or one and a half shot penalty with unraked average Pennsy sand is what will likely never make it accepted by most players. Given the right sand and appropriately placed strategic bunkering it is a great idea.

[Tom_Doak]

Franks thread on Colt bunkers got me thinking that the way that bunkers are built probably has a lot to do with stability and maintenance which in turn are dictated by the needs of identifying the boundary of what is a hazard. What if we went back to the old cross-country style of golf where there was no formal bunkering, just sandy wastes and what was referred to as broken ground ?

Presumably we would have to do away with bunkers as a hazard which perhaps wouldn't be a bad thing. When did "bunkers" become hazards and the rule established that you can't ground the club unless in the act of striking the ball ? If you did away with that rule you wouldn't have to define the bunker and therefore the gca/greenkeeper would be free to design/maintain however he wanted. With that there would be no need to guarantee uniformity of sand, depth of sand and all that sort of stuff that. Transition areas would be more blurred, clumps of grass would grow in bunkers, the sand would get caked and hard, all making it more varied and enjoyable (at least for me !)

And while I'm at it, credit to Castle Stuart who I have been giving a bit of a gentle kicking to on other threads, for partially adhering to this by encouraging it on some of the bunkering there but not yet all through the green.

Thoughts ?

Niall

Niall:

I've had this discussion with several important people in the golf business, because we have attempted on several courses to blur the edge between "bunker" and "natural sand", yet when events come around they always have to define the difference.  Dustin Johnson learned about this problem the hard way!

My own preference would be for all sand areas to be playable as "through the green", rather than all being defined as bunkers [as they did at Whistling Straits], or using some artificial method [paint, rakes, etc.] to determine what is or isn't a bunker.  However, the powers that be are very much afraid of giving great players the opportunity to ground their club and possibly improve their lie in a greenside bunker.  Yes, improving your lie in the process of addressing the ball is illegal ... but no, the rules staff do not want to have to watch over every such situation or call a penalty for an infraction.

[jeffwarne]

Franks thread on Colt bunkers got me thinking that the way that bunkers are built probably has a lot to do with stability and maintenance which in turn are dictated by the needs of identifying the boundary of what is a hazard. What if we went back to the old cross-country style of golf where there was no formal bunkering, just sandy wastes and what was referred to as broken ground ?

Presumably we would have to do away with bunkers as a hazard which perhaps wouldn't be a bad thing. When did "bunkers" become hazards and the rule established that you can't ground the club unless in the act of striking the ball ? If you did away with that rule you wouldn't have to define the bunker and therefore the gca/greenkeeper would be free to design/maintain however he wanted. With that there would be no need to guarantee uniformity of sand, depth of sand and all that sort of stuff that. Transition areas would be more blurred, clumps of grass would grow in bunkers, the sand would get caked and hard, all making it more varied and enjoyable (at least for me !)

And while I'm at it, credit to Castle Stuart who I have been giving a bit of a gentle kicking to on other threads, for partially adhering to this by encouraging it on some of the bunkering there but not yet all through the green.

Thoughts ?

Niall

Niall:

I've had this discussion with several important people in the golf business, because we have attempted on several courses to blur the edge between "bunker" and "natural sand", yet when events come around they always have to define the difference.  Dustin Johnson learned about this problem the hard way!

My own preference would be for all sand areas to be playable as "through the green", rather than all being defined as bunkers [as they did at Whistling Straits], or using some artificial method [paint, rakes, etc.] to determine what is or isn't a bunker.  However, the powers that be are very much afraid of giving great players the opportunity to ground their club and possibly improve their lie in a greenside bunker.  Yes, improving your lie in the process of addressing the ball is illegal ... but no, the rules staff do not want to have to watch over every such situation or call a penalty for an infraction.

While I agree that the above may produce some dicey siuations, I'd say the worry about improving a lie by grounding in a greenside bunker would be moot as players would play an explosion anyway, and lies in greenside bunkers are uniformly pretty good already in events.
Improving a lie by grounding in a fairway hazard would seem far more advantageous as the player is generally trying to hit the ball first or cleanly.

Pinehurst should present a few challenges/opportunities for new ideas on dealing with this.

[Andy Stamm]

The ability to remove loose impediments through the green can also lead to some questions.

See 5:00 of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCbkw4xQVEs

[Sean_A]

Do folks think there would be issues with sand being dumped on greens due to practice swings?  I spose one way around this is deeper pits, but aren't there are a lot of places that can't go deep because of water tables?

In any case, is all this talk worth it just for an aesthetic effect?  While I am not overly keen on raking between every shot, I think bunkers as non-hazards would eventually lead to hard packed sand as the solution to footprints.  This is something I would not want to see if only because I know golfers struggle mightily form this sort of lie if there is any sort of height on the face to cover.  Yeamans convinced me of this.  Getting up n' down is practically impossible for nearly everybody.  Okay, some of that is due to tough greens, but I would rather not risk the loss of greens like that to make bunker play easier - and yes, I do think it would be a risk.  We have a test case with Tobacco Road and their waste areas.  In the end, the owners "allow" golfers to rake under their ball before hitting because they know the waste areas slow down play quite a bit.  The waste areas look good, but don't play very well - meaning the punishment is more severe than the crime warrants - for the average Joe golfer.   

Ciao 

[Carl Rogers]

Last fall I had the opprtunity to play Tobacco Road (one of my bucket list courses).  That certainly qualifies as a course that blurs the distinction between "waste area" and "bunker". They have gone into a far more relaxed, if non-existant, standard of bunker maintenance in certain areas of the course. 

Also, they have instituted a couple of local rules concerning the "bunker":
1. they permit the grounding of the club in the "hazard"
2. raking and replacing the ball within the "bunker"
3. and still yet allow the carts to drive in the sand - waste - bunker areas

It is not advisable to hit your ball into one of these areas.

[Rich Goodale]

This is a really great thought/proposal, Niall.  One does have to think out of the box from time to time, and this is a good time for this issue.  Once you think about this issue (which you have inspired at least me to do) you wonder why bunekrs are treated any differently than any other part of the course through the green.  I'm sure Tom is right when he talks about the fears of the powers that be regarding "improvement" of lies, but is there really any basis for those fears, particulalry for those elite players who are under more and more constant scrutiny from officals and armchair rules officals?  Frankly, as a players for more that 50 years I can imagine how I might improve a lie through the green but not in a bunker (e.g. "ground" the club aggressively behind the ball) but I do not have a clue as to how I might do so in a bunker, even if I were to join the dark sides of rules cheats and casual golfers.  All I can even think of is getting some sort of information on the state of the sand, but I can get most of that already within the rules through the act of taking a stance.  As long as it is clear that grounding must be done done gently, nay even delicately, this change in the rules could be done.  And, while we're at it, why not make a similar rules change for water hazards (yellow or red)?

Cheers

Rich

[Tom_Doak]

Do folks think there would be issues with sand being dumped on greens due to practice swings?  I spose one way around this is deeper pits, but aren't there are a lot of places that can't go deep because of water tables?

The practice swing issue has also been brought up numerous times in my discussions, I forgot about that.  They cringe at the idea of average golfers watching on TV while their heroes take multiple practice swings in the sand.  They don't want one naturalized golf course to change the rules for all the rest.

[jeffwarne]

Do folks think there would be issues with sand being dumped on greens due to practice swings?  I spose one way around this is deeper pits, but aren't there are a lot of places that can't go deep because of water tables?

The practice swing issue has also been brought up numerous times in my discussions, I forgot about that.  They cringe at the idea of average golfers watching on TV while their heroes take multiple practice swings in the sand.  They don't want one naturalized golf course to change the rules for all the rest.

call it the Keegan Bradley rule-no practice swings that hit the turf,sand,or grass.....anywhere

[Niall C]

Tom D/Rich,

I suspect you guys were like me in that when you played golf growing up, you probably smoothed the sand after a bunker shot by using the back of the club or by using your foot as rakes in every bunker didn't really become the norm until about 20 or 30 years ago (?), at least in Scotland. Why not go back to that ? Just because its no longer a hazard we could still level the sand in the same way you would replace a divot. If the bunkers had less sand in them in the first place, or the sand was allowed to go crusty or hard, then there would perhaps be less "raking" to do. Looking at photos of some of the early bunkers, I'm not sure there was much sand in them in the first place.

I take Andy and Jim's point about a lot depending on the type of grass/soil etc but I would very mcuh like to see a through the green approach become more prevalent.

As for players improving there lie, it would be pretty obvious where someone has improved there lie in a sandy area and therefore the situation I think would be well covered already and easier to enforce than say areas of the rough. I've often heard that Seve was a great one for finding his ball in heavy rough about 150 yards from the green and take out his 3 wood as they he was going to play it. Once he had addressed the ball several times he would then put it back in his bag and decide it was a probably an 8 iron after all. I don't think you could do that and get away with it on a sandy lie.

As some have noted, it would probably need a change of mindset but where better to do it than in a major tournament.

Niall   

[JMEvensky]

This discussion dovetails with Peter's thread on overdone designs.

Nowadays,everything has to be too articulated (design and maintenance) or less sophisticated customers think something is lacking.

[Niall C]

Jon

Bear in mind iof you did away with bunkers as a hazard you wouldn't really have grass bunkers as they would all be the same 

What I think would be great would be something in between, where you couldn't even tell where it began and where it ended.

Niall

[Andy Stamm]

The problem is that in through the green, the sand itself is a loose impediment. So you can move it out of the way just like stones, leaves, twigs, or manufactured ice. Now you can't move your ball in the process, but you can remove sand behind it to cure a bad lie (imagine a fried egg with an opening behind the ball just where your club will come in) and even to create a kind of after the fact sand tee (as seen in that Stewart Cink video). You can't do that with grass (unless it's grass clippings) because it's not a loose impediment. I think you'd have to address that issue first.

[Michael Essig]

Do folks think there would be issues with sand being dumped on greens due to practice swings?  I spose one way around this is deeper pits, but aren't there are a lot of places that can't go deep because of water tables?

The practice swing issue has also been brought up numerous times in my discussions, I forgot about that.  They cringe at the idea of average golfers watching on TV while their heroes take multiple practice swings in the sand.  They don't want one naturalized golf course to change the rules for all the rest.

call it the Keegan Bradley rule-no practice swings that hit the turf,sand,or grass.....anywhere

For WStraits, didn't they have a local rule that all areas through the green were to be treated like bunkers, which is where DJ went wrong?  So, why couldn't we have the DJ rule - anywhere through the green is not a hazard, except where we tell you - which would probably/only be greenside "bunkers?"

[Jon Wiggett]

I also think that practice swings not disturbing the surface might be a way to do away with the whole hasard situation. As for testing the surface in a bunker the pros seem able to cope with this so I don't see why this should be of concern.

Jon

[Stewart Naugler]

There's a few areas at Cypress that blend green-side bunkers and naturalized sandy areas together, for example the left green-side bunker on #13. As the rake lines change daily, you'll see one player ground their club in these transition areas and the next player plays it as a regular green-side bunker shot.

In this picture the line seems obvious-

But then I did a little project where I attempted to make the transition seem a little less obvious-





And a quick question for Tom- Did the green-side bunker on #9 at Cypress inspire you to design the green-side bunker on #3 at Sebonack? I was looking at a friends pictures yesterday and that instantly occurred to me. Maybe I'm wrong! But #9 is one of my favorite holes/bunkers/greens in all of golf.

My photo of #9 at Cypress

Brian's photo of #3 at Sebonack


Thanks