Hell Bunker Photo

[David Stamm]

[JohnV]

Mickey- It looks like you drove it a little too close to the short par 4  5th green at Royal Dornoch.  Thanks for sharing the photo...Dornoch is just so much fun to play.  John VanderBorght posted a couple of my Hell Bunker photos from 1997 and 2003 showing how it has changed. I'll see if he can relocate them.

As my distance mysteriously begins to evaporate, there is no such thing as driving it too close to a par 4.  What I did get a little too close was my second shot to the right side of the pin.  Ball drifted, and drifted, and drifted until it rolled all the way off the edge.

Unfortunately these were put in a folder on an old account of mine and they are no longer available on the internet.

[Bill_McBride]

Mickey- It looks like you drove it a little too close to the short par 4  5th green at Royal Dornoch.  Thanks for sharing the photo...Dornoch is just so much fun to play.  John VanderBorght posted a couple of my Hell Bunker photos from 1997 and 2003 showing how it has changed. I'll see if he can relocate them.

As my distance mysteriously begins to evaporate

Unfortunately, at least in my case, there's no mystery about loss of distance.  Getting older is not for sissies!    The turn gets shorter, the extension gets smaller, the ball doesn't go as far as it used to.  The handful of forced carries at Tobacco Road were a real wakeup call a couple of years ago.

The only answer:  more stretching, lots of upper body light weight reps on the machines.

Lots more stretching. 

[Bill Gayne]

I think it's interesting to look at the evolution of the bunker and the impact of fully defining the boundaries of the bunker with the sod walls.

The 1890s.


I'm going to guess that this is from the 1950s.


2003


2007

[Tony Ristola]

Bill,

Thanks for those shots. Was hoping somebody would post it from decades earlier.

I really prefer the 1950's version. Back then you had a bit of "hope" to find a lie that would have made life easier to escape Purgatory. Today you know if you hit it in you're up over your neck in it.

[Tim Gavrich]

A couple things:

Maybe there was a favorable wind (from behind) when I played TOC, but I didn't really find Hell to be in play.

Also, is Hell usually so ominous because people don't take their medicine from it?  I found the sand in Scotland to be pretty friendly.  If you're more than 5-10 feet from the wall, a decent explosion with a sand wedge should be enough to extricate oneself from Hell.  Do people just get a little too aggressive because there's much more space in there than most of the other bunkers there?

[Mike_Cirba]

"Hell Bunker Photo"?!?!   

Damn..

I thought it said;

"H.H. Barker Photo"!!!   


What the hell does Hell Bunker have to do with Merion?   

[Marty Bonnar]

I like that 1950s photo. Although the bunker in that one should maybe be called Heaven as it's 180deg flipped

F.

[Neil_Crafter]

Martin
You are indeed correct, that photo was mirror reversed, but rather than being from the 1950's as Bill Gayne suggested, its actually from 1960 (not that far away).

Some time back I wrote an article on Hell Bunker for our Golf Architecture magazine issue 4 (2000) and thought I'd attach it as some might find it of interest. I included a series of all the HB photos that I could find that show its evolution into the characterless vertical walled fortress that it has morphed into. You can take it I don't like how it looks these days!

Send me an IM if anyone would like a higher res version emailed to you if you have trouble reading it.

cheers Neil

[Brian_Ewen]

[Mac Plumart]

Would anyone be on board with changing the look of Hell?

This thread has some older images of it.

[Bill_McBride]

Would anyone be on board with changing the look of Hell?

This thread has some older images of it.

Which Hell Bunker?

More important would be rolling back the ball so Hell was again relevant in the Open.  In 2005 I spent a lot of the Open in the 14th green bleachers, and didn't see one ball in Hell.   Damn!