Bellerive bunkers

[mike_beene]

Would the big white amoeba bunkers look a little better with brownish sand. Maybe the big bunkers fit the big greens, but the bright white sand is harsh. Something about the course doesn't appeal to me at all. Perhaps it is the August softness.

[Tim_Cronin]

Both on TV and walking around here, I think they look great.

[Keith Phillips]

I haven't played Bellerive but think they look great on TV.  I'm also impressed with how the balls are bouncing today given all the rain.

[mike_beene]

It may just be the aerial view and view from tower camera angles. Mixed in with my always wear sunglasses sensitive eyes. I know white sand is the trend.

[Wade Whitehead]

Would the big white amoeba bunkers look a little better with brownish sand. Maybe the big bunkers fit the big greens, but the bright white sand is harsh. Something about the course doesn't appeal to me at all. Perhaps it is the August softness.

Mike:
Do you find the bright white sand at Augusta National harsh?
Not rhetorical, really asking.
WW

[mike_beene]

Yes. I also find the switch from brown to white at the clubs around my home of Dallas to be that way. When our committee insisted on white instead I'm f the brown we had the architect was fine but said the change meant the bunkers were too big as they were and he basically Rebunkered the whole course. Now that it is done I like it.

[Dave McCollum]

It's a style of golf.  To my eye, they look they've evolved as they did because of maintenance.  Not easy, not inexpensive, but shit happens because they can.  It's subjective based on the aesthetics of those paying for it. 

[Mark Fedeli]

It’s interesting that they keep the grass short around the fairway bunkers, but still keep the fairway lines inside of them.


Looks to be that way for member play as well. It’s like they acknowledge that the bunkers should be more in play, not buried in the rough, but can’t quite kick the addiction to narrowed fairways.

[Kalen Braley]

The course looks very Fazio'ish to me with the big white sugar bowls.  Who did the most recent renovation of the place?

[V. Kmetz]

As to coloration, I find the bright white sand to be the better presentation for most parkland courses such as this. Like the browner dirt and grayer, "beach" sands seem naturally fitted to links, shore and certain hill n' dale inland sites, for a course intended to be bold, green and trim, the bright white is excellent contrast, and casts the edges and surrounding contour into full relief.


In the macro picture, Bellerive is showing beautifully as exemplar of the RTJ "hard-par/easy bogey, course beautiful, utilitarian" architecture. Whether you like it or not (I have come to) is another matter, but this is it, right here.


I want to call special attention to the green size - divisions and the multiple tees (when you can see them on the screen)...this is what makes a RTJ course of this high style, a much greater pleasure to play/tackle than what can be seen on the screen. Those massive green margins and the swelling tapered contours that divide them not only govern expert play back to the tee (as we're seeing), but make the course seem fresh and different every day...


... a water hazard, a bunker or rough slope on one side which means little one day, is a thing to be countenanced the next...with just a 35 ft move of the pin and/or a different section/location of a tee box, especially so on the par 3s.  If you're not positioned or unable to execute a shot to the proper section, you are constantly confronted with huge breaking, huge distance-judgment putts as well as a number of 35-40 yard recoveries that can necessitate flops, running chips and closely-mown spinners.


Of course I can understand any negative reactions to watching a great preponderance of lag putting from 50, 60 and 70 feet or more -- it does not make for super TV -- but it is a wonderful skill challenge for mortals to encounter.


(((All of this year's majors have had a compelling final round/solid leaderboard, but this PGA is the entertaining as all get-out)))


cheers   vk

[Kalen Braley]

VK,


Excellent post on all points.  I'm enjoying this final round as much as The Open, perhaps even more. 


Agreed on the greens as well.  The undulations are coming out even on TV, which is often hard to see, so they must be pretty significant in person.  I also like the use of doglegs, which seem to be just in the right spots for these guys.


The only hole location that seemed a bit off was the one at 6.  At 223 yards, that looks like such a tiny target to hit with pretty much nowhere to bail out for a reasonable up and down.  A tough mother indeed!!

[mike_beene]

It kind of has grown on me. I think the renovations were Reese Jones. More long bunker shots than
I can remember ever seeing.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Would the big white amoeba bunkers look a little better with brownish sand. Maybe the big bunkers fit the big greens, but the bright white sand is harsh. Something about the course doesn't appeal to me at all. Perhaps it is the August softness.

Mike:
Do you find the bright white sand at Augusta National harsh?
Not rhetorical, really asking.
WW

I like the shape at Bellerive better than almost all of the bunkers at Augusta which are mainly oval shaped and absolutely NOT what you would expect from Mackenzie.  They kept one Mackenzie bunker in a useless spot on 10.

[mike_beene]

When did Augusta go white sand? They are an influential place. What sand does Bellerrive use? Looks a little like the Arkansas River sand popular in Dallas. Tends to plug only if the spin on a wedge is out of control. It is not self raking as Woodland learned yesterday.

[V. Kmetz]

Good question, and somewhere in the many, many fine biography books of ANGC, I think there has been some specific coverage of the original materials used, and even some of the later material used in the ever-renovating course.


Yet when I look at those b/w 1934-5 aerials, those sands look really white in B/W contrast and my regard of some 40s photographs shows similarly, in that the bunkers on say, #12, seemed to be composed of a very "beachy" dense sand...a light gray/white composition that is nicely playable when it gets regular sun, but a cemented demon when it gets excessive moisture.


cheers  vk

[Wayne_Kozun]

And I wonder how frequently Augusta changes out the sand in its bunkers and/or does other major rebuilds.  It wouldn't surprise me if they change the sand every spring ahead of the tunamint.