Bunker tongues..

[John Kavanaugh]

Please explain why they exist and how they evolve over time..

[Mike_Young]

I have always been told they were used either as a stockpile for rock removal or as ingress and egress into/out of bunkers.....but you already know that.....maybe they allow bunkers to speak....

[JESII]

They make one bunker look like more than one...



They get eliminated for maintenance savings...they get destroyed by people stepping on the edge and crushing it into the bunker...they get reoriented by fruitloops thinking it's art that can be "improved"...

[John Kavanaugh]

Would sand splash make them wider or narrower.  Should and architect build them with some give knowing they will eventually erode or should they start out at their asthetic zenith.

[JESII]

Sand splash would seemingly build them up (not wider, higher and more convex), but a superintendent can surely weigh in with the factual answer...I say start them at their zenith and fry the first clutz that crushes one into the bunker and hang him by the entrance with a sign describing his sin...

[ForkaB]

They are meant to mimic nature, at least part of nature.
redanman

By that standard, Dr. V, waterfalls and babbling streams and runway tees should be kosher too.  No?

Mr. G

[Jeff_Brauer]

Yeah John, you should know the terms! But, tongues is used to describe the grass noses that come down into a bunker to give it a free form shape.  They were meant to mimic nature, and it seems to me that Mac and others kept experimenting with them, getting further from nature and more to stylized art.  I think most gca's today have been quoted as saying they are mimicking MacKenzie bunkers, so the ideas have stuck.

I think its a great question to consider in modern design.

First, the maintenance is always tough, so are they worth it? Probably depends on course budget.  They look great.

Second, with changes in bunker construction, specifically the use of fabric liners, how should they be dimensioned?  Many gca's made the sand bays 16-20 foot wide to facilitate power rakes.  Liners make these hand raking areas, which would generally allow us to narrow the sand portions.

Similarly, turf tongues had to have a similar width for machine mowing with conventional mowers (although there are some small, slow, mowers that can mow many steep and tight banks by backing up and down - and they are about six feet wide), or were reduced greatly in size to reduce hand weed whacking.

Generally, I think those trends might allow a general reduction in bunker size from the RTJ era as a way to minimize maintenance on both aspects.  And I think that is a good thing.  When bunkers were bigger for maintenance reasons, they often dominated the greens which IMHO should be the dominant visual in a composition in most cases.

[Mike_Young]

Yeah John, you should know the terms! But, tongues is used to describe the grass noses that come down into a bunker to give it a free form shape.  They were meant to mimic nature, and it seems to me that Mac and others kept experimenting with them, getting further from nature and more to stylized art.  I think most gca's today have been quoted as saying they are mimicking MacKenzie bunkers, so the ideas have stuck.

I think its a great question to consider in modern design.

First, the maintenance is always tough, so are they worth it? Probably depends on course budget.  They look great.

Second, with changes in bunker construction, specifically the use of fabric liners, how should they be dimensioned?  Many gca's made the sand bays 16-20 foot wide to facilitate power rakes.  Liners make these hand raking areas, which would generally allow us to narrow the sand portions.

Similarly, turf tongues had to have a similar width for machine mowing with conventional mowers (although there are some small, slow, mowers that can mow many steep and tight banks by backing up and down - and they are about six feet wide), or were reduced greatly in size to reduce hand weed whacking.

Generally, I think those trends might allow a general reduction in bunker size from the RTJ era as a way to minimize maintenance on both aspects.  And I think that is a good thing.  When bunkers were bigger for maintenance reasons, they often dominated the greens which IMHO should be the dominant visual in a composition in most cases.

Jeff,
Haven't you ever heard that they were used to pile spoils in the old days and then covered with soil.....and many used them as a way to enter larger bunkers without crawing down an bank etc.....I remember hearing that once somewhere....

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

I always thought the spoil piles were chocolate drop mounds out in the rough. See the picture in Golf Has Never Failed Me.

Used as walk outs? Yes, I think that was part of their function, although many are too steep to be used that way.

Hey, I always thought they were there to give my flop wedges from just beyond the bunker a safer aiming place - to avoid sand if I came up short.

[Mike_Young]

Jeff,
I was actually told that years ago when the bunkers were dug by hand...they would remove the rocks and cover them with the spoils and topsoil especially along the great lakes where they were in glacier land...but it could have been a dream one night when my mother was reading me "Donald Ross Has Never FLAILED Me."

[Jim_Kennedy]

JK,
I've been in Fl for 3 weeks now and I've seen enough of them to last me a lifetime.

[paul cowley]

I want to know exactly at what point does a nose become a tongue, as I have wasted many a brain cell contemplating this while the sun sets and until I run out of beer in the dark.

[Mike...DR has never flailed me....classic....I rarely laugh this early...4:10 Meheeco time...it almost hurts....where is the damn sun...seems like nothing works on time down here.]

[TEPaul]

"I want to know exactly at what point does a nose become a tongue, as I have wasted many a brain cell contemplating this while the sun sets and until I run out of beer in the dark."

It depends on a number of things, Paul, but primarily it revolves around whether a golfer prefers to smell a golf course or taste it.

As for the crowd that uses the term "capes and bays" for bunker noses and tongues, I'd have to say they are the ones who were weaned on "duckies" in bathtubs.

[TEPaul]

On a serious bunker note, it just fascinates me where man-made bunkers with "capes and bays" first came from (as a dedicated architectural style).

Was it the Heathlands?

Or was it perhaps Merion East?

To understand the evolution of early "capes and bays" one really should study the evolution of the bunkers of Merion East. The fact that the bunkers started out as generic oval sand shell shaped formations and rather quickly were intentionally turned into capes and bays and that jaggedy bunker edge look is pretty undeniable.

Why was it done that way at Merion East (evolutionarily)? Was it Flynn? Was it Valentine, or both of them together and maybe Wilson too? Flynn did say that no one could make bunkers like those EYEtalions and Flynn just loved all kinds of grasses, that's for sure. With various grass strains Flynn was probably considered to be the finest greenkeeper in America at that time (late teens).

The point is where else in American architecture was that bunker style, particularly the sand flashed bunker shell, done before Merion East?

[paul cowley]

Tom...well I can't answer all that, but I will suggest you get suited up as the road show is threatening your area real soon.

Forrest might be coming next week and maybe me too.

I've been studying asteroid impact craters on the moon and Saturn....how do you think Behr would feel if we combined them with debris mounds?

Hallelujah....what light on yonder mountain breaks....finally the sun also rises in Cabo.

Have a g ;)d day.....your friend, paul.

[TEPaul]

"Forrest might be coming next week and maybe me too."

Paul:

As I look out my window something out there tells me your plans may change, and Forrest's too.  

On the other hand, I may go down there to look at it in this snow and ice. It will give the place so much more of the look of a smooth but topographically flowing "blank canvas" and I think that's a rare take I'd like to see for some reason.