Are Our Bunkers Too Perfect?

[Ian Andrew]

I thought we needed a good philosophical discussion...


I was speaking about the future of golf architecture at a USGA seminar in Boston this winter when I shared the following thought, “Bunkers have essentially lost their strategic value,” The sucking in of breath was audible…

Perhaps it’s my own fault, you see I have spent the better part of the last two decades coming up with ways to keep bunkers playing consistently, avoiding contamination and getting the ball to the bottom of bunker for playability. While this may receive a resounding thumb up from golfers, I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing the right thing.

In the past two decades I have watched membership expectations for bunker maintenance reach a point where members demand perfection at all times. Bunkers were once considered the worst place to find your ball, now they are often now the best place to be. I blame everyone from extremely diligent superintendents, to committed staff, to people who know how to detail a bunker, but the real culprit may be the suppliers who began to manufacture bunker sand for particle shape. We finally got a firm surface that is also easy to get a club though and still drains well.

Congratulations … I think. The last round I played golf I had “ten” bunkers shots and every one was from an absolutely perfect lie in the bottom of the bunker and that was at Oakmont (bring back the furrows).

The PGA Tour statistics for bunker play have continued to improve each decade. While great teaching and a better understanding of equipment can be given some credit, nothing has played a bigger role than the quality and consistency of sand found on tour. Even the elite club player gets up and down a lot more often than in the past. It takes the British Open to remind us that a bunker is supposed to be a hazard with varied lies and stances. I guess what I’m lamenting most is the loss of native sand because it used to create a variety in playing conditions and lie.

And all of this has all created a secondary problem for the game which is financial. Every time golfers demand consistency or perfection it comes at a heavy price. The cost to build a bunker has risen dramatically as we have worked harder to come up with better detailing and then fill them with extremely expensive manufactured sand. What alarms me most is many courses are now using 25% of their entire maintenance budget to maintain bunkers at this extreme level of perfection. In an era where 90 bunkers are common, this is not sustainable or rational.

But think about this ... we spend a staggering amount of money on the maintenance of the bunkers to make them as “easy” as possible to play out of ... yet they are supposed to be a critical source of “strategy” or consequence for poor play or bad decisions.

I always believed in the notion that a bunker is supposed to represent a lost shot and that lost shot can only be saved with an outstanding shot on the way to the hole. Yet when we watch the tour, or play with the best players we know all we here is, “Get in the bunker.”

In my opinion bunkers have lost "some" of their strategic value. What fascinates me more is they can no longer be seen as the first line of defence for an architect.

[David_Tepper]

"The PGA Tour statistics for bunker play have continued to improve each decade."

Ian -

Are you sure about that? I recall looking at tour save data from the late 1990's vs. the past couple of years and the numbers were pretty much the same. There are maybe 8 to 10 guys whose sand save stats are above 60%. No one is above 70% and the majority are below 50%.

I have never looked at data from the 60's, 70's or 80's.

DT

 

[Tim_Weiman]

Ian,

I am certainly not up to speed with industry wide trends for sand suppliers to the golf industry.

However, I vividly recall my experience as a member when Sand Ridge Golf Club opened in Chardon, OH in the late 1990s. Sand Ridge, you may not be aware, sits immediately adjacent to the Best Sand Company mine, a part of the Fairmont Minerals network, one of the leading sand producers in North America.

There were some bunkers with extremely soft sand that I tried to avoid like the plague because of the likelihood of a plugged ball and loss of at least one shot.

I also recall being told the USGA was very interested in this particular sand.

Wish I knew what became of it?

[jeffwarne]

yes, they are too perfect.

But so are our tees, fairways, primary roughs and perhaps even greens.
and now "out of play" tall grass is expected to be "wispy"

[Garland Bayley]

The PGA tour mandates that bunkers be raked in the direction of play.

Being an ornery old ... I make sure to rake all bunkers I get into perpendicular to the line of play after hitting out of them.
Unless of course the men's club is having a short game competition and I get to rake before hitting my shot, which I rake in the direction of the shot.
Then I am very polite to the next guy and make sure I clean up my mess, perpendicular to the line of play.

[Garland Bayley]

With respect to the USGA, they know perfectly well that the average bunker has lost its strategic value. That's why they make a point of insisting the bunkers be deepened when necessary. They did quite a number on Olympia Fields. Also, have you heard of Chambers' Basement?

[Matt MacIver]

I agree, of course.

Solution?: take 50% of all bunkers out, make the rest 50% smaller but allow them to gather from the fairway, and remove the rakes.

This would probably go over as well with retail golfers as Brown is Beautiful and While We're Young.

[Joel_Stewart]

This has been discussed at length (for years) and yet 99% of the courses have not been willing to try anything else.   Fazio himself seems to be cleaning up Pine Valley so I see the trend continuing.

There was a lengthy discussion about if the public would accept it.

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,43144.0.html

[Wayne_Kozun]

Bunkers are still a hazard to mid and high handicappers.  I am sure every course has some old guys who can get up and down from lots of different areas around the green, but a lot of these guys suffer in bunkers since they can't generate the clubhead speed to hit a high explosion shot.  The same for almost all female golfers.

What ever happened to that experiment at the Memorial in 2006 where the bunkers were raked to leave furrows?

[Sean_A]

Like Matt, I think the first apect of bunkers to deal with is the quantity.  Trim that number well down and golfers would be far more willing to suffer the consequences.  Plus, much of the time I think we would get more thoughtfully designed courses.

Ciao

[Steve Kline]

Ian - I agree that bunkers are maintained too perfectly. But, that problem is true of all hazards these days. Here's where I think things should go (like it will ever happen):

1. Fewer bunkers but the remaining ones should be truly strategically positioned. Aiming and framing bunkers are pretty but jack up maintenance costs and generally affect the poorer player more than the better player.

2. Let the rough be rough. You should get crappy lies. Water should not be put on the rough. It doesn't need to be fertilized or sprayed for weeds very often. Double line irrigation has had a horrible negative effect on the rough.

3. Along with #2, fairways should be widened. Make the playable area bigger, but the hazard area more hazardous.

4. Use more humps, hollows, mounds, etc. instead of bunkers for strategic interest. When kept firm and fast these features can send the ball into bad spots and generally create wider hazards that most be played around than bunkers. Use more short grass around the greens. A la #2, this seems to level the playing field between good and bad golfers. Good golfers get confused by all the options while bad golfers enjoy being able to putt or keep the ball on the ground.

[Tom_Doak]

Ian - I agree that bunkers are maintained too perfectly. But, that problem is true of all hazards these days. Here's where I think things should go (like it will ever happen):

1. Fewer bunkers but the remaining ones should be truly strategically positioned. Aiming and framing bunkers are pretty but jack up maintenance costs and generally affect the poorer player more than the better player.

But, Steve, what's the point of a bunker in a strategic location if it's not much of a penalty to recover from?

Also, to those who say that the sand save percentage on Tour is "only" 50 to 60 percent -- what would be the % of up and downs from rough or short grass off the green?  Is there really ANY penalty value to the sand at all?

Ian is right on with what he says.  I've been saying versions of the same thing for years, to any club that will listen [i.e., Walter Travis would roll over in his grave if he heard you talking about making the bunkers more consistent," at Garden City].  Most don't listen, but I still try.

I am starting to think that the best hazard around a green is a mound at the edge (or even partially in the green) that requires you to play over it, but I am having a hard time reconciling that with my goal of making courses look natural.

[Steve Kline]

Tom - I am saying that the fewer bunkers should be very strategic and difficult to recover from. I may not have stated it well but I was trying to say the same thing you did. They don't need to be maintained as wel and you should get plenty of bad lies.

[Jason Thurman]

I am starting to think that the best hazard around a green is a mound at the edge (or even partially in the green) that requires you to play over it, but I am having a hard time reconciling that with my goal of making courses look natural.

There's a low-budget daily fee course I played a few weeks ago that had this feature on one of their par 5s. It was really cool. You could bank shots off of it and use it creatively, but it also loomed on every shot, even a short wedge approach. Miss your target by a few feet and it could repel you all the way through the green. And it blended in fairly well - it wasn't too tall and was tied in to the flat surroundings pretty nicely. I'd like to see it used more often.

When I played Metairie CC in New Orleans earlier this year, I was really impressed by how "hazardous" their bunker sand was. It was extremely soft and any iron shot hit into it had little chance of coming out of its landing crater. Coupled with the steep Raynor faces, it was a real hazard.

I like bunkers visually, but it's true most of them are easy for good players and really tough for bad players. They're certainly not a worse place to be than greenside rough, though some of the stories of how they're the ideal place for a great player to be are a bit exaggerated.

[Brent Hutto]

Good players face no penalty from being in a typical greenside bunker and often face only a minor penalty for being in a fairway bunker. That is contingent fact of history than can not be changed. You can not make every good player in the world un-learn how to play a routine explosion shot from sand and play it well.

That said, poor players or those with severely limited clubhead speed are very much challenged by even the most basic, straightforward bunker shot under perfect conditions. And you're not going to suddenly make every bad golfer in the world learn how to pay a routine explosion shot consistently well.

So you have a choice going forward. Do you bugger up the bunkers by deliberately putting furrows in them? Put talcum-soft sand so the golfer will sink in up to his knees and be required to hit a perfect shot or leave the ball where it lies? Put more and more, larger and larger bunkers and give them more spectacular high lips?

Or do you shrink 'em, not build so many of them, quit trying to make them the hazard of first resort and just minimize their role in the game as other than eye candy?

It all depends on whether you want to go all-in to punish shots to certain spots on the course for strong players or whether you want to slightly flatten out the huge disparity in how the game is played by the elites vs. the masses. Choose one.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Ian,

The hard part about this discussion is how quickly it goes to tour players, when they should have zilch effect on what the average course does.  IMHO, the USGA and PGA Tour can do what they need to do to make bunkers relevant for their players, and we can do what we need to do elsewhere.  Its really two different games, no?

Bunkers still matter for the 99% of average players.  Even if more than that can get out of them in one, which is probably both their and the course managers goal, they don't save par more than maybe 10% of the time.   The trend towards raking and smoothing has been ongoing since I have been playing golf, starting in 1967.  Raking was the first etiquette lesson I was taught.  How much penalty do we need for every day golf in America?

To me, the "too far" is the insistence on perfect maintenance every day, which I expect the economy has toned down.  I had two clients in Kansas at one time.  The private club spent $600K on raking and trimming bunkers every day to present the best possible course to guests and members.  The public course spent about 1/10th of that, but had more rugged edges and only raked four days a week, not seven.  They took a chance on Monday, Wednesday and Friday players seeing less than perfect conditions, but the number of balls in an unraked lie was still really quite small.  It was all appearances.

[Paul Jones]

I like what Harvey Penick said in his book - take the rakes off the course and then the professional will be scared of them again.

However, the mere mortal golfers are still afraid of them.

Does Pine Valley use rakes in the Crump Cup? - just asking since it has one of the best amateur fields.

How hard would Bethpage Black be if the Pros had to play the bunkers in the same condition as I did on a weekend - usually unable to even find a rake.

[Brent Hutto]

I played the Ocean Course at Kiawah a few days after some record-setting deluge had washed out a bunch of the bunker-bunkers (meaning the ones greenside that work like any other bunker, not talking about "waste areas"). They were hardpan mud with gullys and ripples.

Honestly, I botched a couple of bunker shots, got it out successfully a couple of times and hit one amazing shot right up near the hole somewhere along about the 15th or 16th. About my usual odds from their usual sand in normal conditions.

I have to believe it would have made it harder for good players to get up and down but maybe not. If I was able to hit even a couple of good shots out of that muck then Phil Mickelson would probably hole out one a round or some damned thing.

[Paul Jones]

I played the Ocean Course at Kiawah a few days after some record-setting deluge had washed out a bunch of the bunker-bunkers (meaning the ones greenside that work like any other bunker, not talking about "waste areas"). They were hardpan mud with gullys and ripples.

Honestly, I botched a couple of bunker shots, got it out successfully a couple of times and hit one amazing shot right up near the hole somewhere along about the 15th or 16th. About my usual odds from their usual sand in normal conditions.

I have to believe it would have made it harder for good players to get up and down but maybe not. If I was able to hit even a couple of good shots out of that muck then Phil Mickelson would probably hole out one a round or some damned thing.

Brett,

I agree, but if the bunker was not raked he would probably put more effort to avoid it in fear of a bad lie.

I always laughed at clubs spending all kind of money to replace sand because the ball plugged too much - hey its a hazard !!! 

[Andrew Buck]

Ian,

The private club spent $600K on raking and trimming bunkers every day to present the best possible course to guests and members.  

this is just a mind boggling number.  Nearly double the entire maintenance budget of the private club I belong to, and more than double of the semi-private I play.  Admittedly, the bunkers on the semi-private are rough, but I don't think I've caught a bad lie in the firm tight bent grass fairways all year, and with smooth undulating greens rolling at 11, I can certainly overlook less than perfection on the bunkers.

[Richard Choi]

I checked the stats on pgatour.com and here is where thing stand.

Scrambling from Rough: 50% for average and median.

Scrambling from sand: 56% for average and median.

So, in normal conditions rough is better by about 10%. But I am guessing in majors, rough plays significantly harder than sand.

[Randy Thompson]

Without a doubt, there too perfect. Its very to difficult to educate the decisión makers to the contrary. There minds are posoined by TV golf week in and week out. There definition of what is right and good comes from the USGA and PGA tours telecast. Bunkers should produce different skill level shots by alternating the stance and how the ball lies and neither should ever be consistent. I am ok with consistent sand and consistent depths. Our Jobs of educating clients would be so much easier if the USGA and PGA would lead by setting examples. Everybody seems to want a flat cosnsitent lie and requires perfecting that one particular shot and nothing more. Tom Doak mentioned in the thread about Yale that he doubts there is an archtiect alive that could present such a bold course today. He is right, no there is not but not because we don´t have the balls, the problem is finding a client and membership that will, GET IT and support it and not change it. In the current decreasing market for jobs, it´s not the time to build something controversial that goes over everybodies head. So, if anybody can pull it off, it will be one of the five architects that are currently growing in the current crappy market!

[Jon Wiggett]

The easy way to make bunkers harder is don't rake them and maybe even the odd one with a bit of hard pan.

Tom D, on a parkland course I fail to see how a hole filled with sand in the middle of a field of grass can look natural!

Jon

[Andrew Buck]

I checked the stats on pgatour.com and here is where thing stand.

Scrambling from Rough: 50% for average and median.

Scrambling from sand: 56% for average and median.

So, in normal conditions rough is better by about 10%. But I am guessing in majors, rough plays significantly harder than sand.

What is really odd about this, is when trying to increase difficulty, courses are perfectly willing to make playable areas like rough (and even greens) more difficult, but do not try and make hazards harder.

[Paul Gray]

Without a doubt, there too perfect. Its very to difficult to educate the decisión makers to the contrary. There minds are posoined by TV golf week in and week out. There definition of what is right and good comes from the USGA and PGA tours telecast. Bunkers should produce different skill level shots by alternating the stance and how the ball lies and neither should ever be consistent. I am ok with consistent sand and consistent depths. Our Jobs of educating clients would be so much easier if the USGA and PGA would lead by setting examples. Everybody seems to want a flat cosnsitent lie and requires perfecting that one particular shot and nothing more. Tom Doak mentioned in the thread about Yale that he doubts there is an archtiect alive that could present such a bold course today. He is right, no there is not but not because we don´t have the balls, the problem is finding a client and membership that will, GET IT and support it and not change it. In the current decreasing market for jobs, it´s not the time to build something controversial that goes over everybodies head. So, if anybody can pull it off, it will be one of the five architects that are currently growing in the current crappy market!

A very understandable position Randy but I've yet to meet the golfer that didn't 'get it' when faced with small pot bunkers.

The sand can be as well manicured as you like but a sheer lip two foot in front of the ball isn't easy for anyone.

Less sand is less expense and so on and so forth.......