It seems to me that in order to call the bunkers eye candy, they'd have to be way off of the logical playing lines for the hole.

It also seems to me that in order to call them strategic, despite the fact that people don't seem to find them very often, they'd have to be near the playing lines that would exist if the bunkers weren't there.

[snip]

On the other hand, if the playing lines you guys actually played were the same lines with the same clubs you'd most likely have played if the bunkers werent' there at all (or if they were the same that you'd have played on these holes if Rees had placed the bunkers), then they're eye candy...

OK, I'll take a shot. Guys, please be gentle in pointing out the many places where my list is either incorrect or simply full of crap. Here's what I imagine as the strategic implications of fairway bunkering on the holes that have any that matter...

First hole. As Dick Daley has pointed out, if you're left of the bunkers at all you're in the tall broom grass and will probably not find your ball. So the safe play is right of the bunkers, as close as you feel like cutting it to get a better angle to the green. If the bunkers were not there you might shave it a little closer to the broom grass but and you can still do that if you can carry it 275 uphill.

Second hole. No fairway bunkers on the tee shot. The second  shot is only a challenge for those who hit their tee  shot in the range of 210-250 yards and/or miss in the rough to the right. And even for those there is room to the left of the fairway bunker which is the best angle to the green anyway.

Fourth hole. If you bite off a little too much on the Cape-style
tee shot you'll have to clear both the water and the steep-front
fairway bunkers. So they penalize shots that were a little too
short that you might have gotten away with if the bunkers were not there. So it's fun in the sense of walking around the lake to see if you cleared the hazard and finding out that its a good news, bad news thing because you're in the bunker. I don't think the bunker dissuade anyone from a line that the hazard wouldn't already have discouraged.

Fifth hole. Everybody knows about that one. Very strategic, IMO.

Sixth hole. The right-hand fairway bunker is about 240-280 from the back tee. If the bunker weren't there then a drive failing to draw sufficiently would go through the fairway into the lost ball rough. So I'd argue that bunker gives the 290-yard driving hooker a chance to take the most favorable line to get his ball rolling into the desirable right-center of the fairway by removing the lost-ball penalty that would otherwise make him either play left or take a shorter club. The left bunkers are there to basically give defined carry hazards rather than just the irregular edge (very oblique diagonal) of the broom grass. I think defining the carry like that is a big help to those of us who can't perfectly visualize lines and carry distances along fuzzy obliques. Quite a few fairway bunkers at Cuscowilla are of that type.

Ninth hole. Like the second, the tee shot is bunkerless and there is a large fairway bunker reaching in to narrow the hole from the right at just short of the distance where a shorter hitter (or anyone missing their tee shot into the right trees)might lay up. Not a factor for anyone who hits the fairway at least 260 yards off the tee. It does tend to discourage you from flirting with the right broom grass but it does so by pushing you toward the left broom grass so no net benefit.

Fourteenth hole. Already discussed to death elsewhere but they are all second shot (or third shot) cross hazards.

Fifteenth hole. The second and larger of the two bunkers on the left would only come into play on the tee shot of a big hitter playing the up tees. From the back tees it's 315-ish to reach that one. It does look gorgeous from the tee, though.
There's a little bunker just into the line of play from the left that's a 290 carry so for big hitters it will encourage either  playing closer to the trees on the right or playing a cut. In my inexpert opinion, that little bunker is there to slap the big hitter in the face and say CUT CUT CUT however if you can start the ball just inside those right-side trees and draw it around that little bunker you are golden since the fairway opens up over there with plenty of room to roll out and good visibility to the green.

Seventeenth hole. I'll have to let better players than me assess the strategy on this hole. I just bunt my little drives out into the open area in that short right fairway expanse but that line is out of play for anyone who might hit it more than 260-ish. My intuition is that this might be the most interesting fairway bunkering on the course. If you know you can carry it 250 then you aim left of that right-hand bunker and if you know you won't hit it more than 260 you can aim directly at it. The hole is a draw tee shot for righty so it has subtleties that I won't even guess at for that kind of play.

At least in my experience, higher handicappers elect to use the wide, bunkerless right side of the fairway. They tend to be short of the green (and the nasty bunker on the right) and thus, tend to actually hit fewer bunkers, day in and day out.

[snip]

I think it entirely possible that higher handicappers find fewer bunkers at Cusco than lower handicappers soley because of the the different kinds of shot choices they tend to make.

At least that has been my experience. And, again, I take that as a mark of a great course.

What Bob just said pretty much encapsulates my initial opinion when I first looked around the course. And that opinion has not changed after playing it for two rounds. Anyone who hits is relatively short and straight can avoid virtually every bunker on the course (except for a handful of greenside ones) simply by choosing a "strategy" of playing away from the broom grass and playing away from bunkers (actually, the bunkers are easier to play away from than that thrice-damned rough but that's a whole 'nother discussion). That said, it may be that someone who's a long-handicapper by virtue of long and wild tee shots is forced by his length into lines that bring some of those bunkers into play (especially if he really, really wants to avoid the broom grass).

I felt that I was very fortunate not to be in more greenside bunkers but that avoiding the fairway traps was simply my plan for weekend and I managed to hit the ball straight enough to execute that plan. In hindsight, it may have been possible to avoid a couple of the balls I lost in the rough by weighting that possibility more strongly in my choice of lines. The one fairway bunker I did hit into was a bargain compared to stroke-and-distance for a lost ball.

For those of you who can't grasp anti-strategy....can anyone identify a lighthouse bunker at Cuscowilla as first named by G Shak...

Ahhhh... but here's where you're wrong, kimosabe....

On #14, it all turns on the drive.  If you successfully get one up the left side, then your choices are broad.  If you don't and go right, as I did on Saturday, it dominates your choices... you have to go around it or over it or short of it or whatever... the tree factors in also...

In any case let's assume a good drive down the left, as you and I both hit on Sunday.  You call it anti-strategy that you went left on the 2nd, and that is a very valid choice, one that can yield success as you found.  BUT... if you more manfully tempt the bunkers more and go right (like a certain someone), the angle from over there is a LOT better than from the left, particularly to a left pin as we saw on Sunday.  Now of course skill such as yours can overcome this, and you were able to fly completely over the greenside bunker and leave yourself a decent birdie putt (didn't you?).  I'm just here to tell you that having faced both shots - from the left and from the right - I was pleased as punch that after going far right over the farthese bunker on Sunday, I had a straight in shot up the green, not having to carry any part of the greenside bunker.  You're also quite a bit higher over there, can see the entire green, and since you are higher it plays more level and thus shorter - all of which you lose going left.

So is this anti-strategy?  I guess for Tiger and you, the really long hitters, who can get it all the way up to where you have a wedge, this doesn't matter as much.  But for the rest of us who don't hit it that far, well... these things matter.

If I play that hole again, assuming I hit a good drive, damn right I try to play it as far right as I can.  The 3rd is much easier for me from over there.

On #2 you're wrong also, by the way.  Get a drive down farther and you can reach that green... then it becomes a matter of biting off as much of the bunker as you can.  Don't hit it down far enough and your shot choice is dominated by how close you can get it to the bunker... going long and through to the left is not a happy place, as both of us saw.  To call this bunker anti-strategy seems silly to me also - hell it dominates the thinking on the 2nd shot, all predicated on where one has left his drive.

TH

I don't see it your way at all, John. I'll grant you that the fairway bunkering at Cuscowilla does not dictate strategy or demand you work the ball every which way, but that isn't what Cuscowilla is about. You've got to find your own way around the course and get yourself comfortable with the angles without a roadmap.

On two, you can drive almost 300 yards from the back tees before you reach the bunker on the right. Yes, there's a creek down there in the right rough, but it's in the right rough! It's not like it blindly crosses through the fairway. Would it make any difference if it was the Pacific Ocean? You still can't go too far right.

The ideal tee shot is a draw that catches the high left slope and pushes the ball down toward the bunkers where it's flatter. Even from behind the bunkers on the right you're left with just 225-250 yards to the green (sometimes from a hanging lie). I don't see where the complaint is. It's a classic draw-fade hole if you like formulas, but it can be played any number of other ways.

Fourteen is a funky hole, but those two fairway bunkers can be hell if you don't get your drive down in the flat. If you're high and right with the drive, man, you've got some thinking to do.

It seems to me that in order to call the bunkers eye candy, they'd have to be way off of the logical playing lines for the hole."

Dave:

You've been to Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes, right, where there're tons of natural blowout areas and some little pockets of sand that're basically Nature's bunkers?

If some of those are not in strategically signifcant places or are even in completely irrelevant places to strategy would you call those "eye candy" and recommend they be removed?

Perhaps some of these architects today who are putting some bunkers in both strategically significant places as well as in other places that're strategically irrelevant are attempting to basically mimic the random placement of Nature's bunker (the blowout sandy dune shapes or even small pockets of sand) that serve to tie the look of a natural site together.

Do you see my point? Do you see how this kind of bunker placement where some are strategically significant and some aren't basically could mimic the natural look of a raw piece of linksland, Sand Hills land or Pacific Dunes land before golf courses were built there?

Do you think they should refrain from doing things like that for that purpose because golfers like John B. Kavanaugh or Matt Ward or perhaps you think that any bunker must have strategic significance or be removed as irrelevant "eye candy"?

I admit that the bunker feature is perhaps the best tool available to an architect to create strategies but does that mean it should be the ONLY reason he uses the bunker feature?

Brian,

My theory is that those are to define specific line/distance combinations rather than to collect golf balls. Thinking about the tee shot on the sixth, you can look at the yardage book or ask your caddie for the distance to carry a specific little bunker and then hit the shot on that specific line and know how far you have to carry it. The alternative would be to try and estimate where the margin of the long grass falls along a line defined by a distant target. Since the rough margin are irregular and they have a fuzzy appearance from the tee I think aiming at the bunkers is much easier, especially when there's a caddie pointing out one to aim at.

Tom,

I love it when architects use bunkers to pretty up the place...and in that catagorie I would give Cuscowilla a ten....