The third part of Bob Randquist’s treatise on bunker maintenance is now posted under the Feature Interview section and Architecture Timeline.
This final part centers on problem bunkers and the three primary solutions for treating them. This is clearly a very important topic within architecture. With limited or no solutions for problem bunkers, wouldn’t architecture (and thus the game) become more boring?
Instead, solutions that are practical from a time and cost perspective are crucial, thus encouraging architects to be more bold/thoughtful with their designs (Tobacco Road up the way from me is a great example).
Many of the bunkers at Sand Hills are fenced in to keep the sand from blowing out through the harsh winter months. I doubt the folks knew up front what was going to be required to make these bunkers work long haul but the key fact is that they are finding ways.
Same for another high wind spot like Pacific Dunes. There are bound to be challenges that exist with some of the large free form bunkers created by Doak/Urbina at al. However, Troy Russell and Ken Nice kept saying “we’ll find a way” when queried by Renaissance Design during design as to what was/wasn’t maintainable. Their winning attitude meant A LOT to the final design (sadly, Pebble Beach’s imitation dune bunkers lost their own battle to evolve as captured in Geoff Shackelford’s The Golden Age of Golf Design).
In fact, a winning attitude and finding solutions sums up Bob and his entire paper on bunkers. His general summary at the end of Part III on what he has learned re:bunker maintenance over the past 30 years is not to be missed. He concludes by duly noting the dozen plus resources that he used in creating his paper.
It is impossible to overstate to what the addition of Bob’s block of information regarding bunker maintenance means to this site.
Cheers,