The rain has me in the office for a few days, I was cleaning up a bit and came across the Seminole Ross plan. It reminded me of this thread and some of the comments. I try not to use the words always or never when referring to Ross' work, my experience has been he varied from course to course and according to site conditions and client request. I learn something new about him each and every course I get to work on. Anyway, here are the numbers on Seminole, directly from the plan.
Total Bunkers 137 with 9 behind the greens ( I may have missed a couple but should be a pretty close count)
Barton Hills plan had 9 behind
Palm Sola 5
Sara Bay 4
For the most part, of the 15 Ross courses I have worked on and the 2 I am currently working on, the count ranges from none to as many as 4 I think.
This brings me back to an issue at Carolina Golf Club in Charlotte when doing the course there, a statement about Ross "never" placing bunkers behind greens was made during a presentation by a self proclaimed Ross expert, I cringed a bit when he said it but let it go. Sure enough, a battle ensued soon thereafter because I was placing a bunker behind the 10th green. Funny thing was, the original Ross bunker(s) were still there from the original construction in 29 and were also drawn on his plan for the course. We ended up condensing it into 1 bunker and placing it directly behind a small center back plateau where the land sloped away and quickly off course property (now part of course).
Some of the back bunkering by Ross is behind a diagonal green whereas the bunker is behind only from the shallow approach side. This is true of several of the Seminole bunkers and others I have seen. Most of the back bunkers I see were for containment when the back side of the green came to a property line, roadway and at times to protect the next teeing ground.
My guess is of the 270 some odd Ross holes I have worked with, less than 10% had a bunker behind the green. I would not consider that a high percentage but enough to exclude the use of the words always or never. Maybe occasionally is better.
Moral of the story is, Ross was pretty flexible and abt to employ a variety of bunker strategies and styles depending on site conditions or client request.