Penalize the better shot.

[Rob Marshall]

Listening to Jeff’s show his co-host said that he didn’t like the long grass between bunkers and the green at LACC because it penalized a shot that carried the bunker when a worse shot had an easy bunker shot.


Should a better shot get a more penal result?

[mike_beene]

I know bad breaks and the player’s response are part of golf. But the LACC bunkers being surrounded by the fescue is not right. Bunkers are a half shot penalty and maybe more on a course yielding birdies. And they are a more predictable outcome. The rough gives and takes and at LA it was an absolute ( nearly absolute) game of chance. I hope this is not a trend. I would take Royal Melbourne any day. I am sure Thomas was great. But he had a blind spot here. Don’t we all?

[Sean_A]

I don't like hairy rough/heather on the high side of bunkers for playability reasons, nothing to do with better shot penalised more. However, rough/heather can make bunkers blend better and offer added texture.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

More a modern era set-up/maintenance issue than a design issue perhaps?
It certainly seems to me far too often that the easiest recovery shot around the green for a decent player is a bunker shot even though bunkers are supposed to be hazards, ie something best avoided. And yet it's the lush, irrigated manicured cut that provides the real greenside hazard for just about all players.
More short cut grass around greens and a return to no bunker rakes* might return the balance to a more appropriate level.
atb


* not that many golfers in the post-covid era seem to bother raking bunkers very often these days. Foot prints and shot splash points galore seem to infest bunkers these days.

[Ally Mcintosh]

As I’ve said a few times, the dirty secret among many modern architects is that they will prioritise aesthetics over playability if forced to choose. Particularly in this current era where photos and drone shots win the day, if your course doesn’t look “cool” on camera, the rater set will likely give you a miss.

[Niall C]

Was it Tom Simpson or John Low who said something about the nearly good shot that it should be punished more that the bad shot, that at a time when bunkers had been placed well wide of the ideal line/green and it was only the really poor players who tended to go into them. If I recall they advocated bringing the bunkers in so that the first class player had more of a test if they wanted to take on a pin (think of the angles don't matter argument) while the poorer player who hit a wide wasn't doubly punished.


Not sure that exactly correlates to what is described in the OP with the bunkers becoming the safe haven and the rough doing the job that the bunkers once did. Personally I think the job could be done better by having the bunkers gather the ball with the grass cut short round about them. I'm not a fan of chunking the ball out of rough around the green which largely precludes any finesse being used in the shot.


Niall

[Adam Lawrence]

Was it Tom Simpson or John Low who said something about the nearly good shot that it should be punished more that the bad shot, that at a time when bunkers had been placed well wide of the ideal line/green and it was only the really poor players who tended to go into them. If I recall they advocated bringing the bunkers in so that the first class player had more of a test if they wanted to take on a pin (think of the angles don't matter argument) while the poorer player who hit a wide wasn't doubly punished.

Not sure that exactly correlates to what is described in the OP with the bunkers becoming the safe haven and the rough doing the job that the bunkers once did. Personally I think the job could be done better by having the bunkers gather the ball with the grass cut short round about them. I'm not a fan of chunking the ball out of rough around the green which largely precludes any finesse being used in the shot.

Niall

If bunkers gather balls it follows that they gather water too. Generally speaking, having surface water enter bunkers is seen as very, very bad indeed.

[Niall C]

Adam,


I'm not suggesting or advocating that the whole green drains into the bunkers. Where bunkers are built into a mound or the site of a green, the top lip of the bunker is rarely the high point in the mound in that there is usually a bit of slope into the bunker. What I'm suggesting in that instance is that the area between the top lip of the bunker and the top of the mound should be short grass so that balls roll into the bunker rather than being "saved" by longer grass.


Niall

[Charlie Goerges]

I'm actually totally fine with sometimes penalizing the better shot. In the specific case listed I doubt whether that was intentional though. But yeah, that should be a tool in the architect's toolbox. It makes golf more of an adventure and less of an examination.

[Kyle Harris]

What penalty?

Adding risk of difficulty to a more aggressive play.

The risk is still present for the subsequent shot prior to the so-called "worse" shot.



No one shot exists in a vacuum.

[Jon Sweet]

More a modern era set-up/maintenance issue than a design issue perhaps?
It certainly seems to me far too often that the easiest recovery shot around the green for a decent player is a bunker shot even though bunkers are supposed to be hazards, ie something best avoided. And yet it's the lush, irrigated manicured cut that provides the real greenside hazard for just about all players.
More short cut grass around greens and a return to no bunker rakes* might return the balance to a more appropriate level.
atb


* not that many golfers in the post-covid era seem to bother raking bunkers very often these days. Foot prints and shot splash points galore seem to infest bunkers these days.

You give those guys a tight lie and a wedge with no grass between the ball and they will get up and down from everywhere. 

[MCirba]

It is not a better shot as it still hasn't cleared the perimeter of the "hazard".   There...I used the verboten "h" word.

[Niall C]

You give those guys a tight lie and a wedge with no grass between the ball and they will get up and down from everywhere.

I'm not sure that all of them could do it each and every time but even if the up and down conversion rate was high, would that be a bad thing ? I'd rather see them using skill and finesse over chunking a ball out of deep rough.


Niall

[Niall C]

It is not a better shot as it still hasn't cleared the perimeter of the "hazard".   There...I used the verboten "h" word.

Since when was the use of "hazard" forbidden ? Can someone please include me on the list next time they send round the memo.


Thanks


Niall

[Ben Hollerbach]

It is not a better shot as it still hasn't cleared the perimeter of the "hazard".   There...I used the verboten "h" word.

Right, I'd view the bunker and the surrounding grass as one complete hazard. If I hit a shot far enough to clear the sand, but not enough to get out of the total bunker hazard, I clearly didn't hit a good enough shot.

From the perspective of a player playing for the best miss, understanding that a marginal shot just over the bunker and just short of the fringe could be death, It would behoove me to play prudently to avoid such possibility.

[Charlie Goerges]

I'm curious what people think of the concept in the question. Rob gave an example, a number of us have shot some holes in the example, but what about more generally?


Should (and how often) the better shot be penalized? If you don't like his example, how about when a ball in the bunker short has a better chance at par than a ball above the hole but on the green? Or some other such situation of your own devising?


Edit: and maybe give some examples of where you may have seen it or maybe why it's a terrible idea if you think so.

[Jim Sherma]

I find it strange when you start begging for the ball to get in the bunker because the turf around it is much worse. I have a couple of experiences with this and it seems to defeat the purpose of the bunker as a hazard. A couple of examples that spring to mind -


1 - Ballyhack around 10 or so years ago had gnarly turf surrounding their bunkers that were significantly worse than the bunkers themselves. I believe it was mandated at the time of construction in order to deter erosion but it was out of hand. There was one conversation here that discussed that when the thick fescue turs was removed there was an ungodly number of balls dug out of the grass around the center fairway bunker(s) on 2. Back then if you hit it toward a bunker you simply prayed that it was in the bunker otherwise it was likely unplayable or lost.


2 - Ballyneal after a wet spring the one year had the off-fairway gunch very high and gnarly. Many lost balls and few that were found were playable. Once again simply begging to find and missed shot in the bunker as it was the only way you could reasonably have a shot.


I get that these might be extreme cases - Ballyneal was simply weather related and not the desire of the architecture/maintenance meld. Ballyhack was, and is, a very hard course that has since done away with the extreme bunker surrounds, making it a much more enjoyable round while still being a great test of golf that simply has less extreme outcomes for marginally different shot outcomes. I know that there is always a knee jerk response that golf isn't meant to be fair and that everyone seems to think it's cool to play out of unmaintained bunkers. However, I think the reality is that a bit of rub of the green is fine, a 2-3 shot difference based on a few feet either way is extreme. And yes, I know that water hazards and OB have defined boundaries with divergent binary outcomes. These are defined and obvious enough to be played away from unless you choose the risk. A well bunkered course with these types of outcomes can not consistently be avoided and the game becomes one that's very capricious and can get tiresome quickly.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Should (and how often) the better shot be penalized? If you don't like his example, how about when a ball in the bunker short has a better chance at par than a ball above the hole but on the green? Or some other such situation of your own devising?

If the shot in the bunker is easier than a putt from above the hole, how then is an approach that ends up above the hole better than an approach shot played into the bunker? Just because it's on the putting green it should be considered "better"?

In this situation if you believe that a ball on the green should always be in a better situation than a ball in the bunker, it seems more of a conditioning question, where the bunkers are too well maintained or the greens are kept at too fast of a pace for the slope. Both could be easily rectified.

When Billy Casper laid up on the 3rd at Winged Foot 4 days in a row, he clearly determined a ball played to the green was a worse shot than one played short. Does that make the 3rd at WF a bad hole if that is the best strategy?

[Don Mahaffey]

Not sure what a "better" shot is if it didn't clear the hazard.


But, my contrarian take on the bunkers at LACC and many other modern presentations is this. long grass, be it called native, fescue...whatever, and no matter if sand is involved or not...long grass surrounded by perfect turf just looks contrived to me.


Run it in like a finger connected to the native on the extents of the course, I like that. but centerline hazards that look like little pockets of gunch, I don't like the look, and I especially don't like hunting for balls in the middle of a golf hole.


Better solutions to challenge payers exist with clever contour shaping and green design. All in my not so humble opinion.

[Charlie Goerges]

Should (and how often) the better shot be penalized? If you don't like his example, how about when a ball in the bunker short has a better chance at par than a ball above the hole but on the green? Or some other such situation of your own devising?

If the shot in the bunker is easier than a putt from above the hole, how then is an approach that ends up above the hole better than an approach shot played into the bunker? Just because it's on the putting green it should be considered "better"?

In this situation if you believe that a ball on the green should always be in a better situation than a ball in the bunker, it seems more of a conditioning question, where the bunkers are too well maintained or the greens are kept at too fast of a pace for the slope. Both could be easily rectified.

When Billy Casper laid up on the 3rd at Winged Foot 4 days in a row, he clearly determined a ball played to the green was a worse shot than one played short. Does that make the 3rd at WF a bad hole if that is the best strategy?

Some good points, in one sense it's impossible to penalize a better shot because by definition if the result is worse, the shot is worse. That said, you bring up an excellent example of what I was thinking of. I'm curious if a shot on the green was a worse shot or if the penalty for missing was simply too high for some?


I think it can be a more philosophical question. Is it acceptable to penalize the better shot? Given what was said, is it even possible to penalize the better shot?


I think we know what the common complaint is about this. It's where the player complains that they struck the shot well and it turned out poorly. I feel like that's a slightly different question though.

[Kyle Harris]

Threads like this do much to illuminate the differences in Architectural Navel Gazing and what actually happens at high-level tournament golf.

The person you're seeing on TV, executing these shots, is on TV because everyone else in the field was NOT executing these shots.

Over the course of 72 holes, victory often comes because of one shot, somewhere, that was executed better than everyone else.

Find a friend and having a putting contest from 10' over the course of 72 putts.

I bet around the 65th attempt you start to feel the nerves. At that point its a game of inches.

So, where, exactly IS the penalty for the better shot, here? The only shot that matters is the one that ends up in the hole. 

[Matt Schoolfield]

So, I'm in the middle of outlining my essay on luck in golf, and I think the concerned raised here is one of human psychology, but not of any actual substance.

Premise of the question: Since there is a bit of randomness in every dispersion pattern, why is the shot that clears the hazard (the bunker), penalize more than the shot that goes in the bunker.

You can tackle it a few ways addressed here.

• the entire hazard (fescue and all) is the hazard. Which has repeatedly been addressed in this thread.

• the "better shot" is the one with the best outcome, period.

• the look has been of the course has been prioritized over the play.

The thoughts I have on the subject are limited to a discussion about video game design (applicable here) by Justin Ma, where people inherently do not like when the perceived output-randomness (randomness that happens after a decision) as creating negative outcomes, but they do like output-randomness as creating positive outcomes. It's why we have a culture of raking bunkers, and people are livid from ending up in a divot in the middle of the fairway. For better or worse, most people just don't like seemingly random distinctions as giving them a negative outcome.

The first-order example i thought of specifically for the essay was that "fun course" bunkers should kick away from the bunker in every direction, so that if you end up just next to one, you don't accidentally kick into it from bad luck. A second-order effect idea that I had, was that if you do have areas in your course kick into the bunker, the bunker shot from where balls trickle in should be notably easier to get out of that the scary other side of the bunker, so that players feel like the got a "lucky spot in the bunker" and "it could be worse."

I am a bit hostile to this psychological quirk of humans, but I see no reason to push back against the data these game designers have. People will be inherently hostile to this sort of bad-luck-for-better-shot design pattern, so I think it's best to avoid it in the first place. The research has also effectively made me abandon my thoughts that we should have smaller, but unraked bunkers to save on money, as it would probably just infuriate players. I wish we had one or two courses that had design patterns like this so we could experience them for ourselves, but I could see how the inherent hostility people had to them would make them non-viable.

[Mark_Fine]

Although we suggest options, I usually leave the final grass choice around the bunkers to the superintendent.  They are the ones who need to maintain it when all is said and done. Some clubs like the rugged (fescues/longer grass) look like we saw at LACC and some hate it.  At one club where we did a bunker project in the mid-west, the longer grass was removed as they didn’t like balls hanging up in it vs rolling back into the bunker. Fescues can pocket and balls can also plug and even get lost in it.  It makes for tricky rulings (as we saw with Rory) and sometimes difficult stances and/or challenges getting in and out of and/or standing on the side of the bunker. Golfers don’t always know how to properly enter and exit a bunker especially a deep one.  The long grass doesn’t help.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I've heard the same discussion regarding flashed vs flat sand bunkers, i.e., the ball is more prone to bury in a slope, creating a harder recovery for a shot closer to the green.


I rarely got over the better aesthetics of flashing sand, although I tried to keep the flash under 15-20% in some cases.  I agree the rugged bunker green side edge looks a bit out of place.  Now, on the back side or outside, if it ties into other natives I think that looks pretty good and is a proportional penalty.

[Rob Marshall]

I've heard the same discussion regarding flashed vs flat sand bunkers, i.e., the ball is more prone to bury in a slope, creating a harder recovery for a shot closer to the green.


I rarely got over the better aesthetics of flashing sand, although I tried to keep the flash under 15-20% in some cases.  I agree the rugged bunker green side edge looks a bit out of place.  Now, on the back side or outside, if it ties into other natives I think that looks pretty good and is a proportional penalty.

Jeff,
My course has pretty steep grassed faced bunkers with flat bottoms. If the ball comes off the face which it usually does since they have been in place for a few years now, the ball almost always comes to rest within one foot of the grass faces. You are lucky to have one foot in the sand with the other on the face if you are going to play towards the green. Many times both feet are out of the sand. Both fairway and greenside bunkers.  It's almost impossible to get up and down. We're stuck with it now but the membership wishes we had sand flashing. The bunkers are a true penalty shot and should be avoided at all cost.


A number of years ago Hanse did a renovation at Monroe CC with the same type of bunkers. Eventually they cut the grass faces up and made a sand flashing so that he ball would roll away from the face.