How W I D E should a bunker be?

[Adam_F_Collins]

Playing today, I was looking at the bunkers on our #5 hole, whose green complex was rebuilt in the late '90's. Modern mounding, modern bunkers - typical in every way. But I thought about the new bunkers and how unnecessarily expansive they are. (and they're really not abnormal in size).

I know that some architectural have mathematical formulas for their, area's lengths, etc. Is there any 'required' area minimum for a bunker? Is there a minimum space required for maintenance, room to swing, etc?

Couldn't a lot of bunkers be an awful lot smaller than they are and still serve to provide equal aesthetic and strategic functions?

[Adam_F_Collins]

To illustrate my question, let's take an imaginary 'typical' set of greenside bunkers (Example A)  and "squeeze" each of them a bit, greatly reducing their overall area (Example B), like so...



What are the implications?

[Adam_F_Collins]

Now, the perimeter length may have increased, increasing maintenance costs, but would that be offset by the saving of sand? Would the appearance be more 'natural'?

[Yannick Pilon]

Adam,

IMHO, the sizes of bunkers will vary greatly depending on their settings, their intent, their positions, etc....

I have never heard of a mathematical formula to calculate how big a bunker should be.  If there is one somewhere, I think I would prefer to ignore it unless someone can justify for me its usefulness.  I just go by feel, or by instinct with regards to what is needed to obtain the effect I want and the look that I want.

In your example, depending on the setting, of course, I would say that the smaller bunkers would be more difficult to make more visible, beacause of the limited amount of depth of the bunker.  Also, these types of bunkers could be tougher to maintain for a facility that uses the usual sand-pro.  It could thus, be a lot more expensive to maintain.  On the opposite, for a club that already maintains their bunkers by hand, this could provide a considerable saving....

The minimum size of a bunker, or the radius of a curve inside a bunker, depends on how, or with what type of machinerie or instrument its going to be maintained.

Could bunkers be smaller?  Probably.  On the other hand, some should probably be bigger as well.  But again, I don't think this is something that should follow a mathematical formula.  It all depends on the setting and the intent of the bunker.

Just my two cents!

[Mike Nuzzo]

At Pine Valley many are like type B and hard to escape.
At Texas Tech most are like B to keep the wind from blowing the sand out.
Augusta is type A.
I like B.
I don't get any maintenance credit with Don M. when I say I shrunk the square footage of bunkers from 75Ksft to 60Ksft if the number of bunkers remains the same...

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:

Some of the bunkers at Muirfield are so narrow it's not easy to get into them ... but if you are wide of them, you have to pitch over them to get onto the greens, so they still exact a reasonable penalty.

If the bunker area goes down enough, then some hand maintenance is an offset against maintaining a larger bunker with a mechanical rake.  But, I don't think there is a large cost savings.  And, if you want the area of the bunker to be playable area and you're going to have to put in extra irrigation to cover it, the cost of irrigating and maintaining the turf vs. the cost to put in and maintain sand could go either way.

The main reasons to keep bunkers narrow are 1) wind and 2) pace of play ... raking your way out of a really big bunker takes time.

[peter_p]

Effective width needs to be considered. If the bunker is a gatherer from the surrounding area, the sand area can be a lot less.

[Mike McGuire]

Adam -

Re: the top bunkers in your A vs B example - aren't they both equally wide with A having more depth?

If you put those bunkers in the fairway .... Both bunkers would catch approx. equal # of shots.

Balls rolling/ flying  into bunker A ..the one with more depth.... would wind up in the sand more often than bunker B ..where a lot balls would run/skip  through the narrow sand and end up in the grass face.

Deeper (your wider?) is preferred.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Adam -

Re: the top bunkers in your A vs B example - aren't they both equally wide with A having more depth?

If you put those bunkers in the fairway .... Both bunkers would catch approx. equal # of shots.

Balls rolling/ flying  into bunker A ..the one with more depth.... would wind up in the sand more often than bunker B ..where a lot balls would run/skip  through the narrow sand and end up in the grass face.

Deeper (your wider?) is preferred.

Good point, Mike. However, the 'depth' could be controlled by the landforms around the bunkers. The ridges between them could be quite abrupt, causing the ball to roll off them and stay in the sand.

[Jeff_Brauer]

How big should a bunker be? Of all the art forms on golf courses, this is the, well….arty-est.  Unlike tees and greens which need certain sizes and even shapes to maintain turf, bunkers can generally be any size and shape you desire.

I'm sorry that this ditty will require some editing to be good writing, but here are some play, maintenance and visibility guidelines that I follow, however.

Playability

In terms of play, it’s usually desirable to have enough room for a golfer to swing a club, which is a function of size and depth. Usually, a golfer needs about 6-8 foot width and depth to make a good swing, and any bunker that is deeper than a few feet and smaller than this – which in the great outdoors is a very small bunker, even for a pot bunker – means it may be an unplayable lie.

Maintenance

If I am designing “cape and bay” bunkers with several lobes and the superintendent wants – and most do – to rake the bunker with mechanical sand rakes, the minimum diameter those can negotiate on gentle slopes is about 16 feet. On steeper slopes, 18-20 foot is more practical.  However, with the advent of bunker liners, which require hand raking, these dimensions are often not critical.

The capes have some dimensional concerns as well, if machine maintenance is desired.  New bank mowers can generally go forward and reverse so unless the superintendent needs to mow with older equipment there is no turning radius to consider with modern equipment.  However, these mowers are usually at least five feet wide, and may not be able to mow a narrower finger of turf.  At that point, I have the decision to make – why not use an ultra narrow turf finger if it must be hand mowed?  That can be a great look.

Visibility

I like my bunkers to be visible, as most do.  Why buy all that sand to hide it away?  For that matter, on a cape and bay bunker, I prefer it look like a cape and bay bunker, rather than a series of unconnected pot bunkers, which can happen if the capes come too far down to the bottom of the bunker.

Unless you are playing from a highly elevated position – at least 20 foot higher than the bunker - building visible bunkers require that their back be higher than their front.  The bottom nose of the cape must usually be a foot higher than the front of the bunker, and the upper end of the bays will vary in height.  Making these capes visible is usually the hardest part.

I usually keep a simple front bunker edge, since building up any mounds, ridges, or other landforms simply hides what is behind, or requires me to build it even higher, and usually steeper.  Some think that a simple bunker edge front is fairer, since there is no chance that similar shots could have different results – i.e. one shot in sand and the other in the rough.

Bunker slopes can cause all sorts of maintenance problems, and its best to keep them as flat as possible while creating visibility.  I have found that the base bunker slope can be up to 15% (7:1 ratio) without significant washing in anything short of a hurricane type rain.  With rainy climates and certain types of sand, a flatter base slope from 5-10% (and following natural ground contour) may be better.

I build most bunkers at least a foot deep from the front edge, with a 4:1 slope to kick balls away from what would be the back lip for golfers.  (4:1 seems to be the maximum slope most sands will hold on most days, and these will wash in most rains, but are necessary to keep balls from right under the lip on both sides of the bunker)  The low spot, where it transitions from the down slope back to the up slope seems to require six feet.  Then, to get back up the two feet necessary for visibility requires 7-15 for the first foot to foot and a half and at least 4 feet for the last foot around the lip, and preferably 14 or more.

Thus, for any bunker generally facing the golfer, minimum width is:

4-6 feet for the drop from the front lip
6 foot concave bunker bottom
11-19 upslope to bottom of cape

21-31 feet total at the narrowest point, on the golfers sight line.

Flying into New York, I noticed that many bunkers on classic courses were much deeper than we presume, and much deeper than most golf course architects depict on their plans, and they are usually nicely visible.  The bunkers in Adams A example are far more likely to be visible than the B bunkers. However, in both cases each bunker would have to have its base a few feet above the top of the bunker in front, to make them all visible.

[paul cowley]

"there ain't no bunker high enuff....
 there ain't no bunker low enuff..
 there ain't no bunker small enuff......
 there ain't no bunker wide enuff....
 there ain't no bunker skinny enuff...
 there ain't no bunker with to much grassed down face enuff..
 there ain't no bunker with to much sand faced enuff....
 ....to keep me from getting my drift out"

la la la, cha cha cha....ciao.

[TEPaul]

Adam:

Philosophically there should not be any type of standardization in golf architecture for that sort of thing. I thought you knew that. If there is then please tell me who came up with it and was able to see to it that it should be followed throughout golf and architecture.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Jeff, Thank you for your detailed response.

Adam:

Philosophically there should not be any type of standardization in golf architecture for that sort of thing. I thought you knew that...

Tom, philosophically, I do know that - however, in this era of statistical data and market-driven design, I would not be surprised by any formulaic approach to any type of design process. I'm not a GCA, so I have to ask questions in order to 'know' much of anything on the practical side of the subject.

Jeff's response does demonstrate that there are certain numerical guidelines which come to bear on his work. This may not be the type of 'standardization' you speak of, but it does suggest that not just any size or shape or dimension will do - at least from his perspective, and that's what I want to know about.

If we were to play golf in a totally natural grassy dunescape, then we would most certainly find our way to "bunker" lies which we would find unplayable. While some of us might see the beauty in such a lack of 'standardization', there are many more who would not find it tolerable in the least. So where does the camel's back break?

[TEPaul]

"So where does the camel's back break?"

Adam:

That certainly is the question that many or most of us ask and discuss all the time with so many things to do with golf course architecture---both the architecture of the past, the present and the future. There are so many things and so many facets in that vein involving golf course architecture both general and specific.

There's no question many architects get into all kinds of "standardizations", generally involving some type of formulae, of size, of dimension of lie or of maintenance expectation of one type and another. I guess they do that because as time goes by more golfers demand it--those standardizations.

For my part, I'm against any increased move towards most any kind of "standardization" in golf architecture, other than what Max Behr referred to as the 3-5 total necessities or necessary elements of golf itself--eg tees, fairways and greens and sometimes bunkering and rough.

I don't believe all kinds of various things should not be done in golf, only that hopefully they do not become overarching standards in the way of definition and such for all golf and all architecture.

That is why I believe in what I call the "Big World" theory of architecture generally, that there should be something out there for everyone and every taste no matter how diverse or different it may be. I think ultimately, differences, even vast differences are healthy for golf and architecture, even if that includes many things we personally don't like. But if some group really likes it, so what, good for them and good for it.

I don't think similarity is good for the health and future of golf and golf architecture as that begins to get near excessively defined and formulaic courses that leads to standardizations and the quashing of difference.

So how wide should a bunker be? I say as wide or as narrow as the one who makes it wants it to be.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Adam,

No problem, and I thought that is kind of the answer - while hastily written - that you were looking for.

As for TePaul's comments, I suspect he and others shake their head when reading a comment like mine. However, MacKenzie hardly ever ended up with blind or even barely visible bunkers. He had to intuitively know how to slope them, how high to build them, etc.  I just go out and measure what works for that kind of bunker and write it down so my staff doesn't get into repetitive mistakes, and because things outdoors usually have to be a whole lot larger than amateur gca's think!

Nothing in my post should be construed that:

You can't do blind bunkers

You can't do "burial coffin bunkers" which may or may not be blind, or other styles that are not cape and bay, as you depicted

You can't do cape and bays within cape and bay bunkers of different dimensions - in fact each cape and bay should be of a different size to make the most attractive bunker, and different angle, etc.

It was just a long winded way of saying that the deeper (not wider as you suggested) you make a bunker, the more likely it is to be visible and giving you some real life dimensions.  

BTW, Tom D is right about smaller bunkers and wind.  Lower lying bunkers, possibly not visible also help keep the sand in.  It also stands to reason that absent gathering areas, smaller bunkers are harder to find, unless placed really, really, well.

Another factor to consider is the scale of bunkers.  I have always felt that the bunkers should be a bit smaller than the greens (in most cases) for the proper look or the green.  Smaller sites often call for smaller bunkers, and wide open sites sometimes call for bigger bunkers to stay in scale.  That said, sometimes a series of smaller bunkers whose total area of coverage is the same width in the golfers eye works visually well, but reduces the dominance of the sand.

I think the worst bunkerer of all time as it relates to making the green the target is Maxwell. His clamshells were visible, but all too often, looking into one of his green sites, all you see are bunkers and I favor seeing most of the green.

More beating of an expire equine to say that many newbie gca's find that their plan view designs don't work well in the actual 3 Dimensions, because of details of design.  As I mentioned before, your four bunkers might work better visually as 3 (you may have four bunkers in a 3 lb. area) and they would have to be stacked vertically, or oriented not quite so much behind each other to "read" from the fw as they read on plan.

In short, if you drew a line from the landing area through the sides of each bunker, the bunker behind would be blind if not elevated above the bunker in front of it.  For that matter, (and thinking of Tom Doak's comments on Mike Nuzzo's deep fw bunker on another thread, any bay behind a turf nose is likely to be blind on the bunkers you drew.  The turf noses look better if angled somewhat toward the golfer.

That is of course, if you accept the bunker as a work of art, and aren't so concerned with trying to fool someone its the only natural sand blow out in a clay soil state!  If that concerns you (as it does Tom Doak) then turn the damn things at any angle you want to make them appear natural, and let parts of the thing be blind.

As TePaul said, it would really be up to you.  And most gca's and golfers don't really mind some areas of a bunker being blind. If you show some sand, and also can see the support banks behind them, the golfer should have a pretty good idea of where the bunker is.  Its probably more critical from the good players point of view that the inside of the bunker (closer the target, whether green or fw) is well defined. Following the old Ross theory, if the outsides of the bunkers get some funky lies and stances, you probably deserve it more than if you just miss the green.