Fair enough! Looking forward to learning more about Alison's original philosophy.
All these influences contributed to the Alison style, a style that did feature very deep bunkers. Not only were his bunkers deep – both greenside and fairway – they were also very large in scale. Alison’s greenside bunkers were frequently as large as the greens they guarded. He often elevated the green well above the approaching fairway or tee, bunkers were then cut well below the elevation, in effect increasing their depth. Fairway bunkers were placed against or below mounding, also increasing their effective depth. And he was not opposed to an occasional forced carry — usually with bunkers set at a diagonal, allowing for choice and rewarding the bold play.
Greenside mounds would often encroach upon the putting surfaces. This was Alison’s preferred method of creating undulations in his greens, extending and merging either natural undulations or mounds on to the green surfaces. And like many designers his greens were oriented to one side or the other through the placement of greenside hazards or pronounced contours, rewarding those who chose the best angle of attack (occasionally the center was the preferred approach). Another common device was the tilting of his greens sideways — an approach from the wrong angle or one poorly struck would fall away.
Alison's sketch and notes guiding the proper construction of a bunker.
Alison wrote very detailed descriptions of how his design features should appear. His mounding was to have a ‘broken horizon’, and his bunkers were to have the sand ‘splashed’ up to point where it met a band native soil and the grass of the mound. He referred to this meeting of sand and grass as ‘rivetting’ – although he did not use the term in its classic sense – and it was to have an uneven outline. (Many of his bunkers in the US now have grass facing, with little or no flashing and are very regular in outline) In his construction notes he constantly uses the term ‘irregularizing’ — a clear acknowledgment of the irregularity found in nature. Although Alison often created features that were clearly artificial there is something aesthetically pleasing about them; he had a gift for creating man-made features that sympathized with the natural.
Example: The par-3 7th at Hirono.
Source: Tom MacWood RIP