Catering to the topped shot

[Patrick_Mucci]

A golf course in Florida recently completed a renovation.

A component of the renovation was the reconstruction of all the fairway and greenside bunkers.

In the report by the golf course construction consultants who supervised the renovation project, they state:

"Several fairway bunkers have been repositioned, so as to allow a middle iron shot to be hit out of the bunker.....
This was done mainly for better playability so that golf balls landing in the bunker, or on the face of the bunker will always end up in a playable spot within the bunker rather than leaving players with awkward lies. "

Is the intent to offer NO IMPEDIMENT to the flight of the ball
from the bunker, allowing both a well hit ball and a topped ball to be extricated from the bunker.

Is this a concession to mediocrity ?

Is it an attempt to speed up play ?

Does this feature place less of a premium on driving accuracy ?

From the tee, is the tactical signal to the eye diminished or lost due to the benign nature of the hazard ?

Is the fear factor lost and pressure diminished due to the benign nature of the hazard.

Will this process of easing the burden lead to FLAT visual bunkers having little impact on the play of a hole, once again squezing the architectual distinctiveness out of the golf course ?

How can this be good for architecture, golf and ML ?

P.S.   Ran, since posters have to register their email address,
        the need for censorship, especially D I C K Wilson's name
        seems quite unnecessary, and I would suggest you
        have it removed, otherwise we'll be relagated to play
        Howard Stern's fill in the missing word game.

        ____ a-doodle doo
        _____ willow
        Tom ____ or Harry

        You see what I mean  

[Jim_Kennedy]

Patrick,
I guess it depends on the clientele. There are a large number of recreational golfers for whom "hazardous" hazards cause major problems. The course you mention may cater to elderly players making deep bunkers a possible danger. I doubt it will be a trend for anyone who considers building memorable and significant courses.

[A_Clay_Man]

I can see your plight and saw very similar (in intent) ones at the CCoD. But as read your post I went from thinking that it is still a challenge to remain perfectly still while attempting the fairway sand shot. To, thinking that if all they wanted to do was to speed up play they would have the bunker completly removed. So look on the brightside, I guess.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jim,

With the water table in South Florida, it is difficult to build deep bunkers, unless you import alot of dirt, or are lucky enough to be on one of the two major dune/ridges on the east coast.  Some inland courses are at or in places below the water table.

This club is not a residential or community course, but was billed as a golfers golf course.

Eliminating any impediment to advancing the ball would seem to render a bunker.... semi-useless ?

I find the trend alarming.

[Peter Galea]

Patrick,
God forbid we "stymie" the golfer!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pete,

Ya know, I missed it !

Of course, it all goes back to that nefarious deed of 1951.

Make golf easier, eliminate all obstacles, starting with the stymie.  Now, look where it's led !

Tom Paul should have pointed out this obvious connection to me, but that would be admiting to the far reaching effects created by the abolishment of the stymie.

Thanks for seeing the real culprit !

[Tim_Weiman]

Patrick,

Forgive me for a copout answer, but I suppose it depends on the developer's intent.  Is he really trying to built a course for better players to compete on or does he have recreation in mind for the mid handicapper?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat,
Are there a significant number of courses doing this now?
How many would be needed to qualify as a trend?

If staying out of the water table is an issue then what does it matter if courses must use shallow bunkering? The impediment is still there due to a general fear of sand by many golfers.

  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jim,

A shallow bunker without a mound or bull-nose makes sure
there is no impediment to the flight of the ball.

This allows long irons, even woods to be hit with immunity.

This in turn eliminates the premium on driving accuracy since the bunkers are benign, rather than threatening.

I have seen several, prominent clubs make this change, and that leads to other lessor clubs following in their footsteps.

It also diminishes the challenge, one of the great lures of the game.

It is a trend in the wrong direction.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tim,

Originally, this course was built as a golfers golf course.

It was difficult, with narrow fairways, small elevated greens, and a good deal of water.

The developer is long gone, this is the work of a misguided administration, and the dumbing down of the golf course.

[Mike_Cirba]

Patrick,

What can I say?

I'm sure you are as repulsed by the trend of making bunkers "fair", "playable", "consistent", "benign", "impotent", and whatever other obscenities come to mind as I am.

Thank God that no one has yet determined that Garden City's magnificent bunkers border on penal and decided to modernize them.  Sadly, I fear they are part of a dying breed.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike,

It's interesting that most everyone loves to play the GCGC's, PV's and NGLA's of the world with their punitive bunkers and features, yet trends exist that go in the opposite direction of their architecture.

The quest for fairness is probably responsible for most of the negative changes to golf courses today.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

You sure can ask a lot of questions in one post! Without referring back to that post I would say "yes" to the first six, "not entirely" to the seventh and "It can't" to the eighth!

Donald Ross got into some interesting explanations on the fairness and playabiliy issues you're asking about and if you have "Golf Has Never Failed Me" you should refer to his sections on bunkers, scooped out pits, sunken pits with raised faces, pot bunkers etc.

It's apparently Ron Whitten's observation of some Ross bunkering but he states that the farther off line the shot goes (in some of Ross's bunkers) the more difficult it should be to carry the recovery shot over the bunker face. Ross also does talk somewhere in the book about constructing bunkers so that shots into them will not likely hang up on the sand flashed faces.

But as to the flat uninteresting bunkering on some course in Florida you referred to in your post contributing to a trend toward fairness, I doubt it, or certainly not a trend throughout modern architecture and new construction.

Just this last week there was a walk around a golf course that will be opening next year where the architect, super and some others central to the course were talking very seriously about how the bunkering and surrounds should naturalize into areas of unpredictability (to be avoided) and even if in them that the sand playing surfaces would be best if they were  actually INCONSISTENT around the golf course. This was not idle talk but a hoped for result and a definite goal! Of course there was also talk (maybe concern) about whether or not the players would really understand this goal but it's the goal nonetheless! And this would certainly interest you Pat, since some of the discussion revolved around the actual maintenance practices which would be to hand rake maybe once a week and to forego the use of something like a sandpro, which was thought to be damaging to the natural state of these bunkers. And the net result of doing the maintenance this way and less often would definitely result in a cost savings!

So if there seems to you to be a trend with bunkers towards  the course you mentioned in Florida, I would say there are at least 3-4 and maybe a good half dozen architects today who are very much going in the opposite direction and bucking that trend towards the uninteresting "fairness" you refer to.

As you can imagine these are the self same architects we talk about positively on this site and admire for much of their work. But I don't want to appear biased towards them or against any other architect and I don't want to appear to be creating a double standard so I'm not going to actually mention who this architect is I'm referring to on the course walk or even the others who are doing similar work.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

There seems to be a conflict that arises over time, between the MEMBERSHIP and the original architects design or intent.

As club memberships change, distancing them from their origins, fads sometimes become accepted, especially when a club is composed of a relatively new membership, which is happening more often due to golf's increased popularity these last ten years.  Architects have less and less influence over what members want, and are willing to do, even if it destroys the architectual integrity of the original or accepted design.

You have to differentiate an existing golf course from a golf course under construction, the MEMBERSHIP dynamic is light years apart.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

You're making about the most colossal understatement imaginable there about a conflict between memberships and an architect's original design intent! That is basically the legacy left by the "Modern Age" of architecture to the older classic "Golden Age" golf course.

Frankly, I can't really think of a single old classic course that did not have something negative happen to it architecturally or maintenance-wise from post WW2 to recently (the "Modern Age of Architecture"). It actually wasn't until about the last fifteen years that these clubs started to notice what they had and what they'd been doing to them in one negative way or another. And it really wasn't until about that time that the the old "Golden Age" architects started to really get the respect that they deserve!