How Many Bunkers Is Too Many?

[Tom_Doak]

A month or so back, there was discussion of the number of bunkers restored at Hollywood Golf Club, and we all made some vague guesses about what courses had the most bunkers, and how many it was.


My friend Jason Deegan just posted an article on this topic at
https://www.golfpass.com/travel-advisor/articles/trapped-the-10-golf-courses-with-the-most-bunkers-in-the-world



The impetus for the article was Whistling Straits, which, because they count all the sand as bunkers [which many other modern courses do not], blows away the competition.  Hollywood was sixth.


But I was more interested in the courses that finished tenth and third:  Shinnecock Hills, with 160 bunkers, and The National Golf Links of America, with 277, by Jason's count.  Both of those are sacred cows to the point that no one even thought to mention them when discussing Hollywood, and I have to say I was somewhat shocked to see the total for Shinnecock.  But if having too many bunkers is a thing, how do you avoid talking about those two?  Or Oakmont or Garden City, which also made the list?  [He also included Pine Valley, although technically, I thought there were no bunkers there, and those 48 sandy holes on the second hole were just "through the green".]


I hope Sean A. chimes in here, since I think he is a fan of Shinnecock, and not a fan of "too many bunkers".


P.S.  I have not tried to count the number of bunkers at Lido, but it will be a contender for this list.  Maybe it will bump Shinnecock to 11th, so we don't have to talk about that anymore. 

[mike_malone]

My initial thought is that where there are a lot of bunkers too many isn’t the issue. It’s more where there are few bunkers that often unnecessary ones get placed annoyingly.

[Pete_Pittock]

During my round I occasionally think there is one too many, usually this happens when I am holding a sand wedge.


Look at the circumstance where one green is fronted by one large bunker, and different green is fronted by ten small bunkers which defend the same space. Visually the one large bunker is more deterrent, while the small bunkers mean the miscreant shot results in less raking because the ball will be closer to a bunker edge. But the maintenance cost to the club will be larger.
Or consider a church pews complex, where what appears to be multiple bunkers is actually one.


The specific number is pretty much meaningless.

[jeffwarne]

There are many places where more bunkers, especially along the edges, are welcome, as the alternative is lost ball gonja.


As tight as turf has gotten now that high end places roll fairways/approaches, bunkers, combined with the modern bunker maintenance standard  , make many courses easier.

[Tom_Doak]

Visually the one large bunker is more deterrent, while the small bunkers mean the miscreant shot results in less raking because the ball will be closer to a bunker edge. But the maintenance cost to the club will be larger.

There is some "economy of scale" for bigger bunkers if the course insists on raking them all every day, regardless of how much play they've seen.  Other than that, a bunch of small bunkers = less sandy area where a ball may randomly come to rest = fewer bunker shots, which SHOULD translate into less raking, not just in length but in number.

[Joe Hancock]

Is the question really the number of bunkers, or the area covered as bunkers? At Sand Valley Resort, many of the fairways are surrounded by sand, yet the *number* of bunkers would be fairly low.

[Tom Bacsanyi]

Like with anything, it's site specific. For a course like Sand Valley (I won't use Lido as an example because the bunkers are there because they were there on the original), it would be silly not to use sand (bunkers and waste areas, another argument as to which is which). Conversely, it would be silly to put 277 bunkers at Doak's Memorial park (heavy soil, rains like hell, etc).


Our course underwent a bunker renovation where we reduced the bunker acreage from 3 acres to 2. The current acreage seems much more manageable, although there are other factors such as cap concrete liner installation and brand new sand that have reduced our maintenance headaches. Regardless, 2 acres seems reasonable, while 3 seemed ridiculous.


As to NGLA, I wonder if it seems it's not as heavily bunkered because there is literally so much fairway and green. A huge bunker next to an 80 yard wide fairway doesn't look so huge.

[Tim Martin]

I don’t know the bunker count but I thought Atlanta Athletic Highlands might be on the list. “Nests” of bunkers early and often.

[Dan_Callahan]

I don’t know what the tipping point is to push it into the “too many” category, but I do know that at no time at either Shinnecock or National did I think to myself, “there are just way too many bunkers out here.”

I would have preferred not to be in a few of them, especially at National. But I wouldn’t take out any of them.

[Tom_Doak]

I don’t know the bunker count but I thought Atlanta Athletic Highlands might be on the list. “Nests” of bunkers early and often.

Go count them on Google Earth!


This certainly was not an exhaustive bit of research.  Jason had asked me for some ideas on which courses might have the most # of bunkers, but I'm embarrassed that I didn't guess more of them.

[Tom_Doak]

As to NGLA, I wonder if it seems it's not as heavily bunkered because there is literally so much fairway and green. A huge bunker next to an 80 yard wide fairway doesn't look so huge.

Scale is certainly a factor, but so are some of the features like the nest of little pot bunkers to the left of #1, or the eighteen [!] bunkers that form the Bottle on the #8.

[Tom_Doak]

I don’t know what the tipping point is to push it into the “too many” category, but I do know that at no time at either Shinnecock or National did I think to myself, “there are just way too many bunkers out here.”


I would have preferred not to be in a few of them, especially at National. But I would take out any of them.

I bet they could take out forty or fifty that you would never know were gone.


Not saying I'm in favor of that -- those courses were designed that way by guys whose work I revere, and if 272 bunkers was the number for National, so be it.  I just find it "interesting" that the biggest offenders in this category are some of the courses that everyone here seems to love, and no one can even talk about it.


It's almost as if you guys *like* the eye candy, in practice, more than you will admit to it, in theory. 

[jeffwarne]

I don’t know what the tipping point is to push it into the “too many” category, but I do know that at no time at either Shinnecock or National did I think to myself, “there are just way too many bunkers out here.”


I would have preferred not to be in a few of them, especially at National. But I would take out any of them.

It's almost as if you guys *like* the eye candy, in practice, more than you will admit to it, in theory. 

I guess I'm off the hook-amongst the places I mention here most often.....Goat Hill has one, one that I've never seen a soul in in over 400 rounds,
Portsalon has 22(several clusters serving the place of one and at least one I'd like to blow up-most new )
Palmetto 49
all three courses on sandy terrain where bunkers wouldn't be out of place

[Peter Pallotta]

"It's almost as if you guys *like* the eye candy, in practice, more than you will admit to it, in theory  "

Question: "If a golfer doesn't notice there are too many bunkers, do the bunkers still qualify as 'eye candy'?"

I wouldn't be surprised if there were many features we liked in practice that we then strongly disavowed in theory/publicly. [I like flat greens, and I don't mind soft conditions; hard-and-fast causes me more problems than it's worth.]

But when I think of the wonderful courses you've mentioned, and then remember the loving and poetic paeans to them that have graced our pages by the likes of Tommy Naccarato and Tom Paul, I have to conclude that when bunkers are really and truly *done right* even very insightful and well travelled gca aficionados simply don't 'notice' them in the way you're asking about.

[Sean_A]

Tom

To be honest, I had no idea Shinny has 160 bunkers. I don't find the number surprising because I think of Long Island as a bunker heavy area. I never played Shinny so can't say I am a fan. I do, however, want to play National and I am shocked it has 270ish bunkers.

To a large degree the number of bunkers is more about available space to play the game and opportunities for feature variety. At places like like Lytham and Muirfield I feel variety and fairway space were sacrificed for bunkers, especially given the rough Muirfield prides itself on. TOC has a ton of bunkers, but there is plenty of fairway space to avoid interacting with many of them if you don't mind dealing with the other features...its a brilliant concept which is still not properly used as a guide for design. Even a place like Little Aston, which has some great bunkers, has overdone it by a fair number imo. Of course, in many cases we are experiencing a modern version of fairway space so bunkers play a more prominent role than originally envisioned. In the case of Huntercombe, the fairway space and bunkering are significantly reduced from the original layout, still it wasn't heavily bunkered, just efficiently bunkered.

Ciao

[Jim_Kennedy]

Hollywood has an assortment of 39 bunkers on one hole while CC of Troy has about 75 across its 18 holes.


Same guy, go figure.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Aronimink has 170 now!

The layout of these bunkers is a bit interesting. While the restored 170 should be accurate to the original  J.B. McGovern bunkering, they are often found in clusters of 3 or 4. Which 25 years ago, before all restoration efforts began, were single large bunkers.

So the original collection of ~170, probably evolved and was combined into a collection of 60-80 due to maintenance cost, and has now been put back. While the look may be more correct to the original intent, is there a playability advantage with the multi-bunker setup that makes the increased maintenance cost more acceptable?

[Mark_Fine]

Jim,
Variety is the beauty of golf. 

Even with over two hundred bunkers at Hollywood and when I played it a few weeks ago I wasn’t in a single one    But my son was in half of them it seemed! 

I was talking to an architect the other day about a bunker project and his comment when it comes to a course that is worthy of it’s design heritage is to “add to it rather than take away from it”.  So for example if an original bunker is no longer in play for most golfers and now has become just a penal hazard for weaker players he will leave it but consider adding a new one that is more in play for better golfers.  Even if lines of play have changed, he will leave original bunkers and if anything add to them to compensate for altered teeing locations. 


We have had many discussions here before about trying to determine original “design intent”.  It is not always easy and who is to say for sure what the original architect had in mind.  Unless it is written somewhere we are often just making an educated guess.  But I thought it was interesting that this architect didn’t like to take anything away.  He just added to what is already there if it was original.  This would only increase the original bunker totals on older courses. 

[Thomas Dai]

Some aspects to consider -
Weren’t many of the bunkers on yee olde links (and heathland courses) not built, rather they were pre-existing scruffy sandy etc areas, sometimes even tidal areas, that over time were reinforced and some locations for yee olde courses had more pre-existing scruffy sandy etc areas than others.
As to bunker size, small bunkers can be more awkward to play from than large bunkers, more close-by edges to cause nasty stances and lies. But more edges mean more maintenance.
Eye candy. Shame TV etc is now in colour. Yellow sand against green grass doesn’t look so attractive in old black and white films. Nor does yellow sand look so good back in the days when fairways and rough were speckled with multiple shades of green, brown and beige, ie back before irrigated green fairways and rough.
If golf had been invented as an inland rather than links game I’m not sure sand bunkers would ever have come about. Obstacles of some kind yes, but deliberately dug and drained manicured hollows lined with sand, not so sure.
Atb


PS - this piece by Ian Andrew is well worth a read or reread - https://golfclubatlas.com/best-of-golf/on-bunkers-by-ian-andrew/

[Adam Lawrence]

As to NGLA, I wonder if it seems it's not as heavily bunkered because there is literally so much fairway and green. A huge bunker next to an 80 yard wide fairway doesn't look so huge.

It doesn’t _look_ so huge, but it still plays huge. One of my bugbears is huge green side bunkers that require the player to carry forty yards of sand to escape from them. That’s often an impossible shot for a lot of golfers. I understand and agree with the scale argument, but I think that if architects are going to use enormous green side bunkers they need to think about what the alternative route for the weak player is going to be.

[Matt_Cohn]

Ideally, wouldn’t we count the average number of bunker shots a player has per round at these courses and see how we feel about the result? As opposed to the pure number or square footage or whatever.

[Ally Mcintosh]

A “guess the number of bunkers” quiz that adds further info for this thread:


https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,61063.msg1449002.html#msg1449002

[Dan_Callahan]

Was thinking about this some more after looking at an aerial shot of NGLA. The course has loads of bunker clusters. For people who think a course can have too many bunkers, would they see a cluster of 5 small bunkers more negatively than one large bunker that occupies the same or perhaps more square footage? I mean ... you could easily halve the number of bunkers at National by simply replacing clusters with large bunkers. Does that make it a better design? I get that a large number of small bunkers is more expensive to maintain than a few large bunkers, but in terms of playability and aesthetics, is one style preferable to the other?

[Ben Hollerbach]

Dan,


I would believe that many players associate larger bunkers as representative of golf course design from the 1960's through 1990's and symbolize a hazard that has a more man made feel. Where as clusters of smaller bunkers portray a more natural, or untouched look and would be appropriate for a minimalist design of the last 20 years or of a pre-war golden age design.


While that association may not be accurate, it would be the perception of many players.


As to the playability of the hazards, A cluster of smaller bunkers has a much higher variance of potential playable conditions than one large bunker. Players may have higher hope that their ball found a small finger of grass between two bunkers, where that possibility may not exist with one large bunker.

[Tom_Doak]

Was thinking about this some more after looking at an aerial shot of NGLA. The course has loads of bunker clusters. For people who think a course can have too many bunkers, would they see a cluster of 5 small bunkers more negatively than one large bunker that occupies the same or perhaps more square footage? I mean ... you could easily halve the number of bunkers at National by simply replacing clusters with large bunkers. Does that make it a better design? I get that a large number of small bunkers is more expensive to maintain than a few large bunkers, but in terms of playability and aesthetics, is one style preferable to the other?

We have yet to hear from a superintendent whether "more, smaller bunkers" are really more expensive to maintain or not.  I'm guessing that the answer is yes, in the USA, and no, in the UK, because in the UK they would only rake the bunkers that needed to be raked in the morning, and not all of them every day, so some of the little bunkers would be skipped.


I wonder, on a busy day at The National [say 100 golfers], how many of those 275 bunkers actually catch a golf ball?  I am sure they all see a ball someday during the season, but on a given day, I wonder if it's much more than half?


Unfortunately, practically no one actually does these kinds of studies as part of their design work.  We either go with the style of the original architect, or we go with our theories of what the bunkers are there for.