Bunkers framing the back of the green.

[Rob Marshall]

Are bunkers built into a hillside behind greens like at Cypress point or in the picture Pat posted about Mackenzie's bunkers at Augusta fair? Do they really present reasonable opportunity to salvage par? They are beautiful but are they really a good design feature?

[Sean_A]

Rob


In the case of reachable par 5s and 4s, front to back greens or just to hide crap behind the green, I don't see why back bunkers can't be put to good use once in a while. Though Dr Mac did it too often for my tastes. 


Ciao

[archie_struthers]

 


In keeping with our discussion of randomness in bunkering , enjoy them behind green in many cases. Putting them out of play , if there is such a place, as a visual trick works for me too.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Many forget that golf in the early part of the 20th century wasn't solely an aerial game.

Bunkers behind greens were functional, they interfaced with the golfer.

In many cases they acted as a safety net for shots hit too long.

I think you'll find that many GA architects employed them.

But most were hidden from the golfer's eye by the green's foot pad.

MacKenzie was brilliant in his use of elevated back bunkers, which were a function of the location of his green sites and the surrounding terrain.

Sean A,

Could you list the holes on MacKenzie's courses in the U.S. Where you feel his introduction of bunkers behind the green was excessive ?

Thanks

[Thomas Dai]

Would it be correct to presume that bunkers on upslopes at the rear of Dr MacK's greens were originally envisaged to mimic seaside sand dunes, indeed the same for all of his original bunkering?


As to rear bunkering in general, as historical golf features or perhaps saving bunkers I can see some validity, but in times when the cost of golf is often cited as being excessive the installation of rear bunkers maybe needs to be questioned....better to spend maintenance money elsewhere?


Atb

[Adam Lawrence]

I am not a huge fan of the rear bunker. Either the sand is above the surface of the green, and you are playing downhill, which I dislike, or the bunker is blind, which I also dislike.


Colt, for one, almost never used rear bunkers. I remember being amazed on my first walk round Frank Pont's restoration of Tandridge, at the presence of a number of rear bunkers. It made Frank and me both wonder about the possibility of some Mackenzie involvement there, but the timing seems to make it impossible, and there is no hard evidence.


I'm generally hostile to framing the view in the way elevated rear bunkers do, though one has to be aware that if the landform permits such a bunker, it will itself frame the view.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Rear bunkers need space to mitigate against the two points Adam raised as his primary dislikes. They are best suited when there is a natural feature or dune at the back of the green site. However, unless you have space to pull the green forward out of the pocket of the dune, then you end up with the downhill style of bunker. However, if you do have the space you can make the bunker both visible (by flashing up the rear line) and have a flat base (by making the bunker big enough that it bowls out at the bottom).

We built only one at Carne (the third hole) and it was there purely for strategic reasons with the front left / rear right combo making the approach fearsome if coming in from the safe left side. Aesthetically, it didn't quite work as well as it might precisely because the green had to be pushed right up against the back dune.

[Sean_A]

Pat


Dr Mac in his California period seemed to be paticularly enamoured with the idea.  I recall a rear bunker at Pasa (forget the hole) which looked very odd.  There is a path to the rear so the bunker and path looks very messy. The 13th and 16th at CPC look odd with binkering to the rear.  Even the forward bunkers look odd. In general, Dr Mac got carried away and made holes look very busy with all the sand in his Cali period.  I spose one of the problems is execution....they look very fake today whereas they may have looked better 85 years ago.  I recall a Dr Mac plan to stick in bunkers n the railway embankment at 14 Cavendish...set well back from the green...really dopey. 


A lot of this comes down to opinion and imo, most of the time rear bunkers look awful...especially those raised well above the green.  At Augusta 13th I think they were better, perhaps because there is relatively little bunkering and other vegetation dampens their brightness.  Plus, at 13 they have great stategic merit. Ironically, they are well placed at guarding the right side of the green because most players want to stay safely left.  Of course the water makes many players take a bit more club than they really want to making the sand very relevant. 


Ciao

[archie_struthers]

 




We sold a lot of fill to Atlantic City CC when Tom Doak was raising the holes on the back nine . One day he came over to visit us at Twisted Dune , took a nice walk with me and just looked at all the work we were doing . I really didn't know what he was thinking about the job , even though as a neophyte designer I was so hoping he would be impressed. At the time I had so many ideas as to what was good vs bad, I have less now. 

We walked a lot and chit chatted about Pine Valley and golf in general, and didn't talk much about Twisted until we got to the short eighth hole , a simple par three . Tom looked at the bunkers we had built thirty yards behind the green into the dune . He turned to me and asked why ?  I answered that they make the hole appear longer to the eye.  He smiled and on we walked . 


I appreciated his time visiting .

[JNagle]

The bunker behind a green is something I have been viewing often the last few days reviewing photos of Pine Tree and Hole in the Wall (both Dick Wilson courses).  IMHO, Dick Wilson perfected its use and construction.  Wilson did a great job of keeping the floor of the bunker below the green much like most green side bunkers and he built his surrounds such that you could see the sand.  in contrast, Alexander Findlay installed many bunker behind greens but rarely did one see the sand.  A completely different approach than what DW did, but equally effective both from a playability standpoint and aesthetics. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Agree Wilson did a great job with the back bunkers, with the floor at least a foot below the green, but they are also visible.  He didn't worry too much about sand washing as we might today, and they have quite steep slopes above the flattish bottom. 

My tendency is to make them visible and thus, level or above the green, with gentler slopes.  Even then, they almost always require steeper slopes than frontal bunkers, because the top of a backing bunker that gets too far from the green usually looks awkward and disconnected.  As Archie mentions, sometimes it does work, but it requires careful craftsmanship.

In general, I like the back bunkers smaller than the front ones, although I reverse that once in a while (Think Muirfield Village 13 (at least originally, may have changed) that had a small bunker front left and a long strip bunker along the back right.  Larry Packard had a version of that long backing strip bunker in his repertoire too.

The tour pros I have worked with have often commented on the resulting downhill slope to a green generally falling away, and they don't like them.  It is a hard shot, and maybe 10x for the average player, even if they don't know it, since their bar isn't to get the bunker shot a few feet from the hole as a pro might be.

It does seem like most gca's wrote about limiting them.  Mac seemed to like them, but I feel it was because he was creating artful combos for artistic purposes more than anything. 

In modern times, for public play many architects have espoused back left bunkers as a perfect way to make a course look hard, but play easy, on the theory that better players are the only ones who would miss long left, so they make a comeback for different reasons altogether. 

Some believe in the idea of the "master hazard" and a backing hazard that is half as tough, a la the Eden Hole (although that is a front-side combo, not front right back left)

If cost conscious, building bunkers that  rarely see play and only look good has probably diminished.  They did seem more prevalent in the golden age and whatever you call the 1990-2005 era, but I haven't scientifically studied that.

Lastly, if you had your way, what would you think would be some "ideal" number of greens with back bunkers?  I guess some sites, and some architects, who tend to build greens into up slopes naturally end of with more, but in my mind, 4-6 is more than enough.

[Mark_Fine]

Don't have time to post much as I am traveling but someone like Donald Ross almost Never put bunkers beyond greens.  If you see a bunker behind a Ross green it was very likely added by someone else. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

He did use some behind greens at Shennecossett.

http://givenmemoriallibrary.net/vex/vex1/images/450D228C-9E13-4D23-B874-235329297100.jpg

[Patrick_Mucci]

Would it be correct to presume that bunkers on upslopes at the rear of Dr MacK's greens were originally envisaged to mimic seaside sand dunes, indeed the same for all of his original bunkering?
 
NO
 
Do you think the bunkers behind # 3 at Pasatiempo represent seaside sand dunes cut into that precipitous hillside ?
 





As to rear bunkering in general, as historical golf features or perhaps saving bunkers I can see some validity, but in times when the cost of golf is often cited as being excessive the installation of rear bunkers maybe needs to be questioned....better to spend maintenance money elsewhere?
 
Thomas,
 
You're confusing capital expenses with operating expenses.
 
Based upon your premise, golf course design should be solely a function of costs to maintain.
 
Ergo, goodbye Pine Valley, Cypress Point and just about every other GA and modern  golf course.



Atb

[Sean_A]

Although I am not a huge fan of rear bunkers, one course I admire a load uses them quite liberally...but nearly always to stunning effect.  Some of the rear bunkers are really wing bunkers because of the shape of the green



Others harmonize wonderfully into the background and balance a set piece.



And others serve to hide the less glamorous aspects of golf such as cart paths. 



In all the above the examples, the bunker aesthetic blows the doors of the messy, crowded, overbearing effort seen below.



Ciao

[Jon Wiggett]

The 5th at Golspie has two back bunkers which save the lower handicap golfer from a much tougher shot were the ball to be allowed to roll down the slope. I would welcome the removal of these bunkers as because it would require much more thought about where to land the approach shot and encourage more bump and runs.

Jon

[Ryan Coles]

The only ones I've seen are in place to deter the golfer from going long into clubhouse, neighbours garden etc. Local example near to me would be The Kendleshire's 9th.

Aesthetics and boundary issues aside, most golfers of all abilities miss short. Those bunkers long tend to be little more than eye candy.

[BCrosby]

Ryan -


J.H. Taylor and other professionals objected to bunkers behind greens.


Since only better players tended to go long, they tended to be the ones who found them. Taylor's objection was that such bunkers discouraged bold play in favor of what he called "pawky" play.


Bob

[Ryan Coles]

Not even so called good players miss long that often I don't think.

Ask a 2 handicapper how many times he was long compared to short in his last round.

That said, the bunker short right and pin high left is probably over done.

[Jon Wiggett]

Not even so called good players miss long that often I don't think.

Ask a 2 handicapper how many times he was long compared to short in his last round.

That said, the bunker short right and pin high left is probably over done.

Ryan,

high handicappers are almost always short of the flag after a full approach shot. Lower handicappers are normally pin high or long.

Jon

[Patrick_Mucci]

Sean,
 
If you look at the photos you posted, there's a theme, either the golfer has a bird's eye view of the green and surrounds, or the terrain behind the green rises up.
 
Both situations lend themselves to back bunkers.
 
I would be interested to see more photos to see if those two situations aren't the basis for the back bunkers you've encountered.


Although I am not a huge fan of rear bunkers, one course I admire a load uses them quite liberally...but nearly always to stunning effect.  Some of the rear bunkers are really wing bunkers because of the shape of the green



Others harmonize wonderfully into the background and balance a set piece.



And others serve to hide the less glamorous aspects of golf such as cart paths. 



In all the above the examples, the bunker aesthetic blows the doors of the messy, crowded, overbearing effort seen below.



Ciao

[Sean_A]

Pat

Its true, the back bunkers aren't a dominating presence in the holes I picked and all have a raised area to the rear of the green.  Of course, part of the look is that the raised area is not nearly as severe as the Pasa example. To be honest, in the Pasa example I would be okay with rear bunkers if the lower right bunker(s) weren't there.  I would prefer that area to be short grass taking weak shots well away from the target.  Of course, the path would have to be moved to the other side of the tree...jeepers, what a spot for a cart path 

My favourite type of rear bunker is the type shown in my first pic...where the greens moves at an angle and the bunker is either a back bunker or a flanking bunker depending on where the hole is cut.  Or, if the fairway is wide enough and depending on where on drives the ball, the bunker is either rear or flanking (the seond & third are an example of this).  The cleverness of these two styles is miles ahead of the simple version of a rear bunker we see at Pasa. 







 

Ciao

[mike_malone]

At Rolling Green 5, 12,16 have bunkers in the back of the green. 12 and 16 were not original.
In each case the green is ANGLED. That makes these bunkers functional because attempts to carry the ball to the pin brings the back bunkers into play.