To mound or not to mound, and to what degree ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

I was observing various fairway bunkers (in and out of the drive zone) and noticed how different configurations affected play.

Some fairway bunkers provided little in the way of an impediment to successfully playing the hole unless the golfer was unlucky enough to have his ball come to rest right up against the front lip.

What I found fascinating was how the height of the fronting mound/berm affected play.

First, it made for a more visible and a more intimidating bunker, one that sent the tactical signal to the eye, that the golfer should avoid this bunker at all costs.

Other bunkers had fronting mounds/berms, but, they were only slightly above grade and didn't seem to send the same tactical signal to the eye.  Although, they could be equally difficult if the golfer encountered them.

Oakmont tends to have high mounds/berms fronting their bunkers, other courses less so.
With some courses, you don't know there are bunkers present until you see your ball disappear, because there's no mound/berm above grade.

At what height above grade does a fairway bunker rivet your attention ?
What's the ideal threshold between noticing a bunker and having your attention riveted by that bunker ?

[Sean_A]

Pat

Bunkering is quite a personal concept and very dependent on the site.  Ideally for me, the severity of the bunkers should be proportional to how many bunkers are on the course.  Meaning if there are 40 bunkers then I see no problem with building them nasty, deep and harsh and if they can't be deep then a fronting berm will do the job.  I think if a berm is used, I much prefer bold earthworks housing a large bunker rather than merely a mound with sand shy of it.  If there 100 bunkers I think nearly all need to be more forgiving type (think of pots that aren't too deep or shortish mounding) - not necessarily easy to fully recover from, but not too bad in getting out to a decent position.  Muirfield does a pretty good job of offering some sort of recovery, but I still think the course relies too heavily on sand for interest and challenge. 

Ciao

[Ally Mcintosh]

It's clearly preferable to build bunkers in to natural ridges so that artificial front berms aren't needed at all.

But when mounding is needed, I think it depends on the scale of the surrounds as to how bold it should be (although I tend to agree with Sean that it is better to go big and bold in most cases, not least because it's easier to make it fit)

Case study - Portsalon

Pat Ruddy's bunkering was often blind because he built many of them in natural depressions and didn't mound up behind them. I actually quite liked the effect (they were essentially just sand pits) in a lot of places although it was a bit too frequent.... Since then, the club have hired Paul McGinley to make many of the bunkers more visible. He is doing this by revetting quite a few of them which is fine... But quite a few are being revetted in to thin air with a very small local tie-in - they needed to be built with sod walls AND bigger fronting mounds in my opinion.

Great course though - either way.

[Sean_A]

Ally

Visibility seems to be an on-going debate with pots on links.  Like you, I don't mind the hidden bunkers in the folds of the fairways.  On the other hand, there is something menacing about a slight brown area appearing in the fairway, not quite obviously a bunker, but enough visually to cause consternation.  Hoylake's bunkers pull this effect off admirably.  At Burnham the profile of the left fairway bunker on the 7th was raised to make it more visible.  I am not sure I like the change and I certainly wouldn't have spent money on the issue.  I am not sure if they created a larger pocket for the bunker, but I doubt it. 

In any case, here are a few examples from Hindhead with bold earthworks to house sand. 


Ciao

[Jaeger Kovich]

For those who have never built a bunker, have you considered what you might do with the material you generate by digging a pit?

In some situations it makes sense to "balance" your dirt by building it into the feature itself, which often ends up in the form of mounding, or losing it somewhere else in the vicinity. If you do not choose to balance the dirt, then it will likely be hauled to another part of the site, often at greater expense. The era in which a bunker is built will often help explain the style because of construction technology.

Drainage was also a big factor in the creation of the mounding before sufficient drainage technology was developed... If you built the bunker up into a mound, it would allow for better drainage.
 

There are some nice diagrams in "Golf Has Never Failed Me" the Donald Ross book, in which he draws cross-sections of bunkers to illustrate how to create the mounding in different landscape situations.

[Thomas Dai]

I think Jaeger makes a couple of very goods points here about both spoil and also drainage. There is also the water table issue to consider.

There are many fairway bunkers, irrespective of lip height, on free draining links (and even heathland courses) Muirfield being one links course that comes to mind, where the ground for several yards around the bunker is sculptured to feed balls into the bunker, the base of which is well below the surface of the surrounding terrain.........but if you tried sunken fairway bunkers on say a poorly draining parkland or meadowland course I imagine you'd frequently get lots of water in the bunkers, hence presumably the trend particularly on modern-ish era inland courses for bunkers to be built within a raised-up mound. Indeed I recall seeing TV footage of the after effects of flooding on a flat inland course and it was very noticeable how just about the whole course, even many of the greens, was covered in floodwater but lots of the bunkers and surrounding mounds were poking out well up above the floodwaters, indeed the sand in the bunkers still easily visible.

Now my preference, topography, soil type, drainage etc permitting, is for fairway sand bunkers to be high lipped deep pits, genuine hazards. However, I'm also very much in favour of grass bottomed fairway bunkers, even if they're sunken ones without much lip, those at Huntercombe and on the Green course at Frilford Heath being examples. If they're dry they make shots a bit more challenging for the better player whilst the lessor player can play out of them okay, and if they're very wet, well you get a free drop from casual water in a grass hollow, but from a water filled sand bunker you don't, unless a local rule takes it out of play. With grass bunkers there's also less daily raking needed and less need for occasional reconstruction.

I hope my wording does justice to what I'm attempting to say! I shall try to find and post some photos by way of further clarification.

There is one more aspect that I would like to highlight however, and one I really don't particularly care for, and bunkers within mounds on modern-ish era inland/parkland style courses seem to be the main culprit. This is where a narrow collar of rough is left at the front and side edges of a sand bunker which then holds back a ball from otherwise rolling into the bunker. I hate this. I'd much rather the grass were cut right up to the bunker edge so allowing the damn ball roll into the bunker if it has the momentum to do so.

Interesting post Pat, thanks for raising it.

All the best.

PS - there's also the light and dark shadow effect of bunkers. Rans recent interview/photography class with Aiden has reminded me that from my eyes bunkers in darkness or in shadow always seem to look mean and evil, while those in bright light look quite a bit less severe.