"Bunkering" a course

[Michael Whitaker]

Back in the days of yore a new course wasn't considered finished for a year or two until it had been "bunkered." The powers that be let play determine where bunkers would be placed... using golfers' shot tendencies to influence their placement and quantity.

When and why did this practice end?

Why do today's courses open "finished?" Isn't the process of bunkering a course after a year or so of play a better process which will ultimately yield a better product?

[Joe Hancock]

Michael,

I think the tendencies of golfers are more predictable now. The game has been played much longer, and there's more golfers than there was in the early years of golf.

Also, I think it's unwise to base a course and it's features on the play of a small sampling of people(two years worth?) vs. good planning that will work for generations.

Joe

[Jeff_Brauer]

Michael,

In about 1970, when first interested in golf and golf architecture, I bought a copy of the then NGF publication "Planning and Building the Golf Course."  The idea was still discussed in that book, but more as a cost savings idea whereby a course could carve out bunkers, but add sand later with in house crew to save money.

I actually got into the business in 1977, and only recall a few instances of every using that method, and Killian and Nugent catered to some cash strapped clients back then.  I think the practice was on the way out by then.  Besides, with the rise of most courses being designed by an architect over a committee, I presume that they presumed that bunker placement should normally be correct.

I mean, we know how far golfers hit the tee shots - yes all over the map but clustered around a few key distances like 300 for pros, 250-260 for good ams, 225 for average players, 175-200 for seniors and good women players, etc.  After a few hundred years of architecture, I would be most believe we can predict about where most golfers will play, assuming what tee they use (often a big mistake)

Not to say that downhill, windy, cross slope holes might not yield a few surprises to even the most astute architect, and of course, minor course tweaks still happen almost to every course.

[Tom_Doak]

From a practical standpoint, you want to put in drainage pipe before irrigation pipe, because fixing irrigation pipe is much more costly.

In the old days, before there was much irrigation to worry about, adding the bunkers later didn't cost much more because you wouldn't tear anything up.  But with today's big irrigation systems, waiting until later to add the bunkers would cost quite a bit more because of the irrigation fixes required.

[Shaun Feidt]

Never heard of this method before, sounds interesting, but not too feasable.

Commenting on Mr. Doak's post, when we upgraded the irrigation system on one of our courses, we didn't realize all of the drainage that was installed in our bunker complexes, due to not having any plans describing the upgrades over the years.  It didn't take long to find out that when the contractor was pulling pipe, he broke almost every drainage exit from each greenside bunker, turning them into ponds.  We figured all of this out years later when we were working on a complete bunker renovation. 

[Michael Whitaker]

Jeff - it makes sense that wealth of experience has made post-construction bunker creation a thing of the past.

Tom - I hadn't thought of the drainage/irrigation issue... I guess that didn't exist back in the day.

What made me think of this was two things... 1) all the discussion about Merion and the old newspaper articles mentioning how great the course would be when it had been bunkered. 2) the Sebonack thread discussing the addition of bunker(s) after the course opened.

[Niall C]

From a practical standpoint, you want to put in drainage pipe before irrigation pipe, because fixing irrigation pipe is much more costly.

In the old days, before there was much irrigation to worry about, adding the bunkers later didn't cost much more because you wouldn't tear anything up.  But with today's big irrigation systems, waiting until later to add the bunkers would cost quite a bit more because of the irrigation fixes required.

Tom

That sounds entirely sensible to me. Might I also suggest that back in the day before they started shifting dirt with diggers and before they started putting in irrigation, courses would have been laid out on a lay of the land basis with a good deal more run. Consequently predicting exactly where balls were going to end would have been a good bit more difficult.

Niall

[Niall C]

Mike

I was actually thinking about this recently as well and also because of the recent Merion threads. My guess is that the practice of putting in bunkers after was probably still prevalent in the UK until after WWI and then probably started to be phased out as the likes of MacKenzie started preaching finality.

Niall

[Bill Brightly]

It is good question and I think it has been answered pretty well in terms of why "finishing" makes sense for modern courses.

As you know, we are going through a gradual renovation of Banks' first course: Hackensack. In reviewing the original plans, I am amazed at how many fairway bunkers were drawn but never built. I had assumed that the club leaders were simply holding costs down, but I now believe that Charlie was waiting to see how the course played before deciding on final placement. (I learned that from the second Merion thread.) Of course, the Great Depression hit a couple of years later, so these bunkers were never added. However, the original plan gives the current consulting architect a wealth of possible bunkers to add and still remain loyal to Banks' plan.