Re "Nature's Bunkers" Thread: Man & Strategically-Placed Bunkers

[TEPaul]

"I'm striving to become a sheep!

KMoum:

Is there a singular for sheep in Scotland, and if not, why not? Like, perhaps a shep?

And if not, I think it's high time we create the word shep as the singular of sheep, don't you? It just sounds right, don't you think?

And what the hell kind of characteristic does a living thing have to possess to deserve being referred to in quantity as something like a "flock"?

I think the shep in quantity needs a plural that has some alliteration to it so it does need and "S", at least, as the first letter.

Checking the Thesaurus these would seem to be the available alternatives that begin with "S" for a group of sheep together;

Synod, squad, string, spate, sloth, skulk, school, shoal, swarm, spring, sheaf, snowball, stockpile, set, suite, series.

Take your pick for sheep together as to your favorite amongst those althernatives listed above.

I think I like bevy. Don't you think a bevy of sheep sounds about right?

Let's see what we can do for a bunch of rabbits, shall we?

[Mark Bourgeois]

And the plural of "house" should be "hice."

Re seeding: couldn't birds eat them, defeating early attempts to use seed to negate creation of strategic, manmade bunkers?

[TEPaul]

"And the plural of "house" should be "hice."

I think you're right, Mark. I think that would most certainly make mice feel a whole lot better about themselves too, don't you, particularly when they cohabit our hice with us? I think they'd be far more secure and more likely to feel at home.

[BCrosby]

If we are going to post pictures suggesting that some of the great golf courses in the world just kinda, sorta happened,
then I reserve the right to repeat:

Who knows, bunkers might sometimes arise naturally. I doubt it, but it's not impossible.

But that's not the point. The point is that what doesn't happen naturally is their arrangement in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course.

Sheep and rabbits are good at doing many things, but that is not one of them.

Or to paraphrase (again) my beloved high school physics professor (he is now asking about royalties), extraordinary explanations of golf course formation require proof more extraordinary than a couple of modern photos of Scottish swards.
 

Bob

[TEPaul]

"Re seeding: couldn't birds eat them, defeating early attempts to use seed to negate creation of strategic, manmade bunkers?"

Mark:

Actually, there was a short piece in one of the golf architecture books from Peter Thompson where he mentioned that the birds were what distributed seed in the swards early on. I'll see if I can find it and quote it.

[TEPaul]

"But that's not the point. The point is that what doesn't happen naturally is their arrangement in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course."

Bob:

I should show you about a five mile stretch below Amelia Island Florida along old A1A where there are reams of natural bunker features. If one wanted to make a golf course there, the trick would really just be to arrange fairway amongst them to make it interesting and strategic.  

I suspect in the very old days of golf people just arranged holes amongst the natural arrangements of "sward" (natural grass areas) and sand or dune or naturally occuring blowouts (what we formally call bunkers). Behr called this kind of early totally natural golf "wild" golf. I call that early type of thing "path of least resistance" golf, if one is going to assign some kind of strategic import to playing a golf ball across and around it.

But how would one go about attempting to emulate that original natural linksland arrangement of sward and sand areas on, say, an inland course today that possesses no natural sand?

In the sense of bunkering one might do what Gil Hanse and Bill Kittleman tend to do on some courses, even inland---eg just scatter rugged bunkers of all kinds of shapes and sizes and odd formations all over the place for the simple reason to make it appear they are all naturally occuring even if some are strategic and some are in no sense strategic or meaningful to anyone's playability.

I think Gil certainly realizes some might accuse him of "eye candy" bunkering with this kind of arrangement but I don't think he cares, as he feels it's done in the name of more aptly emulating the natural arrangements of say coastal linksland.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Maybe this should be a separate thread, but how do you keep a blowout bunker from blowing out?!

I would guess you take a tack similar to a revetted or sod bunker, but that seems too rectilinear.

[Ken Moum]

"I'm striving to become a sheep!

KMoum:

Is there a singular for sheep in Scotland, and if not, why not? Like, perhaps a shep?

Synod, squad, string, spate, sloth, skulk, school, shoal, swarm, spring, sheaf, snowball, stockpile, set, suite, series.

Take your pick for sheep together as to your favorite amongst those althernatives listed above.

I think I like bevy. Don't you think a bevy of sheep sounds about right?

Let's see what we can do for a bunch of rabbits, shall we?

You really need a copy of "An Exaltation of Larks" by James Lipton. See Amazon.com

I have one and it says it's a colony of rabbits, or a husk of hares.

You're not going to get me to bite on sheep, however. It is and will be a flock of the fuzzy things.

It does bother me that Lipton suggests that the term should be a Lie of Golfers.

BTW, I just wasn't satisfied with being a GCA llama, so I up(?) graded to sheep.... mostly out of love for Brora Golf Club.

Ken

[TEPaul]

"BTW, I just wasn't satisfied with being a GCA llama, so I up(?) graded to sheep.... mostly out of love for Brora Golf Club.
Ken"


Has anyone told you recently you're really weird?

Welcome to the club.

BTW, sheep have never had a single thing over llama---not ever.

But if you want to debate the relative measure of sheep against camels, I'm game.

[Ken Moum]

Has anyone told you recently you're really weird?

Weird? Once in awhile. More often it's been "mental." As in head case on the golf course.

My wife thinks it's odd that I would show up on the first tee of a couples golf tournament with a driver she's never seen.

Did you know it's not normal to be normal?

Ken

[RJ_Daley]

Nebraska sand hills has more of these cattle made blowout bunkers amongst the grassy prairies than they have a population of people. Below are scenes around one of the finest pieces of ground I ever saw for a golf course.

[Andy Hughes]

No! The angle is looking down a slope into a collection area.

Oh. Hmmm. Nevermind.  That makes more sense  

But that's not the point. The point is that what doesn't happen naturally is their arrangement in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course.

But Bob, we already kinda know the old, narrow Old Course was studded with bunkers and was in no way strategic. Is it your belief that all those bunkers were filled in and scores of new more strategic ones built, or that the course widening made all those bunkers strategic when suddenly there was width, or some other option?

[James Bennett]

A Hughes

I have hypothesised on the Reverse Course threads that 'strategy' evolved at the Old Course by two things - widening the fairways and reversing the order of play.  I need to check the information on St Andrews to check the timelines, but the combination produced IMP a more strategic golf course.

It may have been genius, it may have been happenstance - who knows what the driving cause for the change was.  Was it a seeking of strategy, or was it just providing a wider playing area with safer lines of play for the increasing numbers playing the course?

James B

[Rich Goodale]

JB

It's pretty certain that the widening was made to both increase the throughput of golfers and offer them some safety.

The best contemprary account (Balfour) postulates that the widening made the course LESS interesting to the golfer and less conducive to the formlation and execution of golfing strategies.

MB

As to the original question, the evolution of bunkering (in Scotland, at least) was far more due to man than slightly less rational animals.  The best bunkers are in places towards which the terrain will feed then eventually funnel an errantly directed rolling golf ball.  Some of the worst are where even well-meaning and relatively compoetent men think they should be (viz. the ugly and irrelevant pots put by low on the right side of the outward holes at the Old Course; or 95+% of modern bunkers).

RFG

[Andy Hughes]

Rich, are you familiar with anything that describes the genesis of the better, or better known, strategic bunkers such as Hell, or the Principal's Nose, Strath/Hill, the pots in the middle of 12 etc?  Were they there when Balfour described the numerous bunkers that 'studded' the course.

You imply that they are man-made ('far more due to man')..do you have reason to believe that about St Andrews?

[Mark Bourgeois]

Excellent post, Rich!

"Welcome back Dr. Falken. Would you like to play a game?"

Mark

[Rich Goodale]

AH

By "man-made" I include bunkers whose genesis began with angry men and their niblicks hacking away from areas where balls tended to settle.  When I was writing my book on the Old Course I saw nothing to indicate that most of the oldest and most famous bunkers were anything but acts of fate rather than design.  The big ones (e.g. Hell) probably started as blowouts, but the pots were probably created post-facto, as it were.  The names of the bunkers, e.g. Principal's Nose came after they had been in play for some time, not when they were created.  Also, as I remember it, a lot of bunkers were in fact filled in when the course was expanded in Balfour's day.

MB

Tic Tac Toe, please.....