Puttable bunkers

[Sean_A]

Niall

The only way to offer optimal options from the bunker for a putter is to have little and/or hard sand, shallow bunkers and likely bunkers which gently slope.  It all seems quite contrived to me and at the end of the day what is the point of using sand when grass can do that job?  That said, I have seen guys use putter from bunkers at Woodhall Spa, so the option is available, but usually a needs must situation would call for that sort of play.  I am waiting for the day when the darlings of architecture create insipid bunkers to be putted from    I don't recall ever admiring a bunker which can routinely be had with a putter. Jeepers, I despise bunkers which don't contain shots...that is just poor bunkering if you ask me. 

Ciao 

[Neil White]

I agree with Sean that shallow, nay flat bunkers don't really offer much if anything of a hazard.


I also agree that courses are generally over-bunkered and would rather see a deeper containing bunker than an insipid, shallow affair. 


I'm still of the opinion that the option to putt out of bunkers fall mainly on failings with maintenance coupled with firm (wet / frozen / compacted) sand - indeed in a couple of instances I have been able to putt out of a relatively deep, sand flashed bunker where the alternative 'pick' off the sand is seen as a higher tariff shot.
[/size]
[/size]As Will states - get it right and you look like a golfing genius - leave it in the bunker and well, you can imagine.

[PCCraig]

There is a great "puttable" bunker behind the 11th green at White Bear Yacht Club. The bunker is directly behind the green. What makes it so neat is that the green is incredibly severe in it's back-to-front slope. So much so you must be 5ft above the front part of the green while standing in the bunker. If you're ball is in there, you can either try to chose to hit an essentially 1-yard bunker shot with backspin, or putt it out of there over a short lip. Anything but the most delicate shots from the bunker will roll off the green with serious pace.


Here is Morgan Clawson's desciption of the hole:

Hole 11
Par 3 – 180 and 159 yards.


One of the great things about a round at WBYC is that you’ll see holes and features that you simply don’t see elsewhere.   This is one of those holes.


Aerial view.



From the tee, this looks like a fairly straight-forward par 3.



Wait a minute.  There’s a lot more going on here!



The back half of the green has a steep slope and serves as a back-stop.



There’s also a subtle downhill slope at the front of the green.  Most of the hole locations are in the valley between the 2 slopes.  There is a right to left cant to the green that you can see from the tee, but can be overlooked while on the green.

[Jason Thurman]

I almost never like it, but there's one time it works. As with the 11th at White Bear Yacht Club, or the hole that sparked this thread, I'm ok with it when the bunker is above the green. Preferably, its floor should slope downhill toward the putting surface as well. In bunkers like these, a strong sand player has to hit a very tough sand shot which keeps the bunker playing as a true hazard, while the crappy sand player with the creativity to see the option to putt out and delicate touch to pull it off can make things much easier for himself.

[Cliff Hamm]

Agree..it is best when the bunker is above the green. It takes much more talent than to get it close as you need to hit it with some firmness to get it out of the bunker and then it will pick up speed going down the bank to the green

[Dane Hawker]

One wet winter the Pro and I had some fun and did a putting instruction video and including putting from the bunker


https://www.facebook.com/northshoregolfclub/videos/vb.142309802487307/10150366763500830/?type=3&theater

[Cliff Hamm]

What's most amazing is that every putt went in

[BHoover]

If you find yourself in one of the bunkers behind the 15th green at Kingsley, I'm not sure how you manage to keep your ball on the green unless you putt. But this is an option because the bunker sits above the green, the lip of the bunker is small, and the fringe cut between the green and bunker allows for putting.

As others have said, this is not a feature I would necessarily favor on a regular basis. But as an occasional feature and shot option, I like it.

[Jim_Coleman]

    The bunker to the right of #16 at La Romana Country Club is very puttable, but I rarely choose to putt.  I find a regular sand shot easier to control.  Pete Dye thought it was worth offering the choice, it seems.  I think higher handicappers prefer the putting option - when it occurs to them.

[Sven Nilsen]

There are a number of these at Bandon.


15 at Trails was already mentioned, but the most friendly for putting is probably the back left bunker on 17, or the front right bunker on 2.


There are places in the bunker behind the right side of the 14th green at Old Mac where putter is the best option when the pin is set on the top shelf (there's a nasty lip in the middle of the bunker edge that makes it impossible but doable if on either side of it).  This sounds a bit like WBYC as others have described, with the back to front contours on the green making for a fine line. 


No one has really mentioned the lie itself in the bunker.  I like this option when faced with a downhill lie to a green sloping away from you. Not many people have the skill to pull off that shot with any kind of sand wedge.

[Niall C]

Niall

The only way to offer optimal options from the bunker for a putter is to have little and/or hard sand, shallow bunkers and likely bunkers which gently slope.  It all seems quite contrived to me and at the end of the day what is the point of using sand when grass can do that job?

Ciao

Sean


It's perfectly possible to design a bunker where the depth of the bunker face varies; where there is an overhang in part and no lip in another part and where the slope inside the bunker varies also. That's what the ODG's like Colt, MacKenzie and Simpson did for at least part of their career. In that way it imitated nature. We seem to have lost that with modern day bunkering, even on restored bunkers on classic courses.


Niall

[Neil White]

Someone's been reading up on GCA...  fixed broken link...


http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/golf/10214411/putting-in-a-bunker

[Tom_Doak]

There are a number of these at Bandon.

When we were building Pacific Dunes, when the first 11 holes were playable but before the whole course was open, winter conditions and lack of traffic made it possible to putt out of a lot of bunkers.  I used to putt out of the left greenside bunker on #5 all the time, especially since one usually got a downhill lie as you mention.  Even the back right bunker on #16, with no lip, putted like going up a giant water slide. 


However, golfer traffic softens the sand and makes footprints, and rules people insist that the hazards have a definable "edge," and that's why you don't see more people putting out of more bunkers.

[Kalen Braley]

My old home course in Spokane, WA had very poor bunker maintenance.  The sand was always compacted down making bunker shots more closely resembling hard pan. 

So a lot of us learned how to put out of them and quite frankly did much better on average than taking our chances with the club bouncing off the sand and skulling it across the green.

Then just before I left, they came in and replaced it all with a finer grade of blinding white sand that didn't compace near as easy.....and ruined it! 

[Kyle Harris]

I am inclined to agree with Hugh Wilson on the matter:

“The question of bunkers is a big one and the very best school for study we have found is along the seacoast among the dunes. Here one may study the different formations and obtain many ideas for bunkers. We have tried to make them natural and fit them into the landscape. The criticism had been made that we have made them too easy, that the banks are too sloping and that a man may often play a mid-iron shot out of the bunker where he should be forced to use a niblick. This opens a pretty big subject and we know that the tendency is to make bunkers more difficult. In the bunkers abroad on the seaside courses, the majority of them were formed by nature and the slopes are easy; the only exception being where on account of the shifting sand, they have been forced to put in railroad ties or similar substance to keep the same from blowing. This had made a perfectly straight wall but was not done with the intention of making it difficult to get out but merely to retain the bunker as it exists. If we make the banks of every bunker so steep that the very best player is forced to use a niblick to get out and the only hope he has when he gets in is to be able to get his ball on the fairway again, why should we not make a rule as we have at present with water hazards, when a man may, if he so desires, drop back with the loss of a stroke. I thoroughly believe that for the good of Golf, that we should not make our bunkers so difficult, that there is no choice left in playing out of them and that the best and worst must use a niblick.” [/font]

-Hugh Wilson, 1918