What's the point of the bunkers approximately 50 yards short of the greens on these two par four holes?  They punish the high handicapper and are irrelevant to the good player.  I ask because we are considering adding a bunker to our 480 yard, downhill par 5 (but really a 4 1/2).  Some (including an architect consultant) suggest that the bunker be 50 yards short of the green, as opposed to 20 yards short.  (There are natural swales for both placements.)
    I don't get it.  Why place a bunker in the wheelhouse of a guy who can only hit the ball 225 (and doesn't need to be punished any further), and which is essentially irrelevant to the good player. (How many good players miss long to mid-iron shots by fifty yards?  When's the last time a Masters competitor was in the bunker on #10?).  Why not place it nearer the green to punish a poorly (but not pathetically) hit shot into the green?
    Or, put another way, do the bunkers on #5 at Merion and #10 at Augusta serve any serious strategic (as opposed to aesthetic) purpose.  Would the Augusta bunker have been built if today's greensite were original?  I doubt it.

Jim,

The bunker on the 5th at Merion is probably the most important bunker on the hole.  It makes you think about how to play that second shot because the green slopes sooo much from right to left that many of us 'short' have to hit a 5 or 7 wood over that bunker for the ball to feed down to the hole.

If you can hit the 5 wood to land 10 yards past the bunker then bounce and roll before feeding down to the hole, you feel great!!

Tom Doak explains it much better in his book The Anatomy of a Golf Course.

Jim,

Excellent questions.  As the one that came up with the idea to put a bunker short of the green on the 7th at Rolling Green, I guess I should explain my thinking on the subject.  I wish I could recall Tom Paul's analysis because it was very well presented to Knucklehead Malone.  It was all for naught in his case--he doesn't like the idea.  He doesn't want to make the change because he thinks if Flynn wanted it there he would have put it there.  Never mind that he likes the chipping area to the right of your first green while Flynn's plan called for the green was to have it surrounded by rough with a deep bunker on the right; sort of like the 12th at Merion West except it has a steep drop off to the left.  Never mind about his desire to see the fairway on your 11th moved to the left.  I don't see consistent logic in his decision making but at this point it comes as no surprise  

The bunker in the fairway short of the 10th green at ANGC is a vestige of the original hole design where it was a greenside bunker.  I don't know when, but the green was moved 50 yards down the line of play and the bunker was kept.  It is a beautiful bunker but does not come into play for the professional golfers that visit every Spring for the Masters.  I've never been to the course, but I'm sure it comes into play for the membership and guests.

I would like to point out that in general there's nothing wrong with some hazards or features being in play for higher handicappers that are not in play for low handicap players.  Although I think topshot bunkers such as used by Ross were taking things too far.  All golfers should have the thrill of being challenged and overcoming the challenge.  I haven't met too many high handicappers that want to play golf without appropriate punishment as it is not golf.  It is good to have hazards and features in play for all golfers, and there is no rule that they need to be the same hazards.  Certainly there are hazards in play for good players that are not in play for high handicappers.  

However, the bunker concept on Merion's 5th and proposed for Rolling Green's 7th is not just for high handicappers and do/would come into play for all classes of golfers because of how it integrates with the whole hole.  By the way, I thought the concept at Rolling Green, which was lauded by the consulting architects, was approved on some committee/board level but tabled indefinitely.  Is the idea going to happen?

Let's consider the bunker on Merion's famed fifth hole.  I believe it was there from the very beginning of the course.  I find this hole one of the great holes in golf and a brilliant use of natural features including the stream and cant of the fairway and surrounds from landing area to finish.  I think the bunker on the right complements everything going on with the hole.  A bunker at Rolling Green replicates some of this but it is different as Merion's is a long par 4 and Rolling Green is a short downhill par 5.  At Merion, the leading edge of the bunker is about 40 yards short of the front of the green with 30 yards between the rear of the bunker and the front of the green.  A golfer that challenges the stream along the left has several advantages.  They take a shorter route to the green, have an open look at the green, can hit into the right to left slope and they have a flat lie.  These are all terrific rewards for assuming the risk of playing near the stream.  Golfers that slice or push their drive or elect to steer well clear of the stream are left with a longer approach, have a sidehill lie and need to play over the bunker to feed off the sharp right to left slope onto the steeply pitched green.

At Rolling Green, the hole is 490 yards with the first half being significantly down hill.  It is a very short par 5 which tempts better players to go for it in two, especially with the difficult three hole stretch coming up.  You need the architecture to integrate with that temptation.  The first desire is to get the 4 evergreen trees in line along the right short of the green taken down.  The topography there is too good to leave them in place and reduce recovery options on a difficult pitch to a green falling away from you.  Now we know that all the high handicappers cannot reach the green in two, they play the hole as a true 3 shotter.  Given the slope of the second fairway, nearly all second shots will end up on the left side of the fairway leaving an opening for their short shots into the green similar to that of a well placed drive down the left on Merion's 5th.  Playing from this position presents them a corridor between the green and the bunker to approach the green from if they choose to play a ground shot.  High handicappers that play along the right side, maybe they were in the rough or sliced their second shots to the right will have to play over the proposed bunker (I thought there was a natural roll to place the bunker about 40 yards short of the green--you say it is either 50 or 20 yards.  If that is the case, I would certainly elect to place it 50 yards short) and have plenty of room to land the ball and feed it onto the green.

Low handicappers can easily reach the green with two good shots.  I would restore the fairway more to the creek to bring the creek into play and present a more off angle to the next shot with the last tree on the left requiring a shaped recovery shot.  With the evergreens out on the right (2 remain to be removed, right?) low handicappers have nothing to fear at all unless the rough was grown high.  The club doesn't seem interested in having deep rough along the right side as the rough is about 2.5 inches everywhere else on the course.  So without high rough, the best defense is a bunker.  Low handicappers or players with more brawn than brains will find the bunker in play on a variety of outcomes off the tee.  If a player is in the rough on their tee shot and their approach ends up in the right rough in the second fairway, that bunker will be in their minds as they play their delicate approach to the green.  Longer players that hit the first fairway know they have to take the long approach up the right side to feed the relatively low trajectory approach shot onto the green in two.  Having to fly this shot over a bunker is a worthy addition to the demands on a short par 5.  There would be plenty of ground beyond the bunker.  It is a relatively small hazard but one with great psychological impact.  It works very well from a strategic point of view and it gets the low handicappers to agree to take down that horrible tree line on the right before the green.  The natural rolls make an ideal placement point for the bunker.  The bunker should be placed so that it is on the edge within the current fairway line and if it is to be built, fairway should be extended around the bunker and behind.

I have to do some grocery shopping.  I'll try and address this later.  I'm looking forward to comments from those that know the hole.

I am not a big fan of trying to figure out what bunkers effect what people, believe me, as a champion of a new master plan at my club, I have heard it all.  In fact, one of our newly completed holes with two new fairway bunkers (the club specifically requested more fairway strategy) has received complaint because one bunker "nobody wil go in" and the second bunker "it will effect too many shots".

Wayne-My experience makes me a little leery of any consulting architect that "agrees" with a members idea.  I suppose it boils down to the credibility and ethics of the man but I saw a plan completed at my home club by a very busy restoration "specialist" who  compiled a laundry list of member ideas and reguritated them in a effort to deceive the membership into somehow believing they were honoring the original archtiect.

Wayne,

You write too much...

Corey,

I think you bring up a generally valid point regarding an architect taking the advice of members.  In this case I was just a member and not on any committees (I am no longer a member) and am also good friends with the two consulting architects.  They've told me many times in the past that I had a boneheaded idea and explained why.  These two have the highest levels of integrity and would tell me at the drop of a hat that I was full of crap.  I don't think I am in this case.  Besides, bunkers can be removed.  Granted at a loss of several thousand dollars but it is by no means permanent architecture.

Eric,

I guess that is who Malone was referring to, but he wasn't so short.  He was about an inch shorter than Hogan who I guess was average height in that day.

Brian,

If you think that was long, wait till I send you the manuscript--1580 pages with photos and drawings inserted!

Tommy,

But as knuckleheads go, Malone is one of the good guys    Dense yes; dimwitted, evidently.  But he means well.  He's our Quaker knucklehead who requires another beating soon to keep him in line  

Mike Malone,

Please consider the words of Tom Doak from another thread and before him, Alister MacKenzie:

"But, to go back to your original question, you can't have a great hole unless there is a sense of accomplishment to be gained from it, and an easy hole leaves less sense of accomplishment.  Dr. MacKenzie was perhaps the first to note that for many players the hazards are there to give psychological thrills when you carry them, as much as for penalizing the missed shot.

If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe these more learned fellows.

"There is no such thing as a misplaced bunker.

Regardless of where a bunker may be, it is the business of the player to avoid it."

Jim,

I was quoting Donald Ross.

I don't think that you'll ever reach perfection in bunker placement.

I also don't think that a patterned architectural approach is good.

"Randomness" is part of the lure and challenge of the game.

And, I think strategic placement is critical to the mental and physical aspects of the game.

Most golfers view features in the context of their game, and to be fair, I think you have to view features in a broader context.

So, can some bunkers be better placed than others ?
It would depend upon the context in which you evaluate the placement.  Better for whom ?   And, under what circumstances ?

One of the things I like about TOC and NGLA is the random placement of bunkers that in some cases seem illogical, yet, they work.  Perhaps not on a single day, but, over the course of time with a wide variety and voluminous number of golfers.

I don't think you can view bunkers or features in the sole context of one shot.

I think you have to view them in the almost infinite variety of situations in which golfers may approach or avoid them.

I happen to like the general concept of mulitple bunkers meant to perform seperate functions to the variety of golfers who choose to approach or avoid them.

What I've really enjoyed is the clever positioning of a bunker that, on the surface, looks out of play, yet, when you mis-think or mis-execute your shot, suddenly you're faced with dealing with that bunker that under normal conditions (thinking or executing) would otherwise be out of play.

Fair enough.  Maybe there are no bad bunkers.  Although I'm not sure that the critics of Whistling Straits would agree.

My opinion:  On a very short par five, "feeding the ball onto the geeen" shouldn't be an option.  If you're going to hit the green in two, hit the green with a great shot.  If you miss slightly, you're penalized.  On a two shot par 5, risk/reward is the key!

I doubt it.