Sure Mark, it’s not just Rees Jones. Almost all modern designers are building 130 yard long bunkers (sometimes 450 yards on both sides) these days so it must be the only solution….
…Moving on, Niall’s last point reiterates what I was getting at. Any architect who gets too hung up on the numbers, designing bunkers around a 250-300 yard “turning point” over and over is surely going to design a less interesting and - if on good topography - less natural feeling golf course.
Over the long haul… yer not wrong Ally 👊.
Ciao
Agree, Pete Dye also saw the problem coming and used long side hazards on several of his designs.
However, simply focusing on any one group of players, especially only the minority of the longest players is inevitably a fools errand.
At my home club of Henley GC (Oxon) in 1994 they took out a number of second shot hazards, that didn't affect the longest players, to put in traps further back to challenge these same players. Now those newer hazards are superfluous (to that group) and they are looking to add hazards at the same distance and place as the ones removed in 1994! What was second shot defence for the average player is now drive defence for the longest.
All that expensive and circular activity is a prime example of economic waste as expoused by Dr. Mackenzie in "Golf Architecture".
Additionally, a largely ineffective member of our Green Committee uttered the following potentially prescient statement (even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally):
"If we move all our bunkers to challenge the longest players and the R&A/USGA actually get a grip and do a really telling rollback of both ball and clubs, then will we simply have to move all these back again?"Unless a genuinely Tournament or Open Championship Course, variety and randomness in bunker positons based upon the land infront of one is IMHO by far the best way forward. Design to the 95% not the 5%.