[Forrest Richardson]

Tom D. — I believe we've discussed this before. The last two 18-hole projects I've done have 15 and 21 bunkers each. Adam makes a great point of the interest in other features — hazards — such as natural terrain, ravines, etc. (I appreciate Adam's mention of Civitan Park...Jack Snyder will be happy to hear there is someone who even recognizes his involvement those many yeara ago!)

More bunkers are not better, usually. Bunkers are like pimples. Lots and lots is nothing but acne. But a few will noticeable and problematic, especially if in the right (wrong) places.

Donnie — I maintain that the three priorities in bunkers are:

  1.  Placement
  2.  Scale (size, shape, relationship to the terrain)
  3.  Edging/aesthetics

Your comment about "rough edges" and less nail-clipper precision is well taken, but I hardly find it essential. A small crew — even just you and I — can easily re-edge a bunker and allow the grass to grow higher. We can visit the local nursery and buy 20 or 30 1 gal. containers of native grasses and plant them wherever we like. We can do this anytime anyone will let us...the results will be quick. But to master placement and scale is the real art. It is not trendy.

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom Doak;

How many of the 126 bunkers at Merion would you remove?

Any at Lytham?  Oakmont?  National?  The Old Course?  Muirfield? Cypress Point? Shinnecock?  Garden City?  Prairie Dunes?  San Francisco?  Hollywood?

I would call each of these courses heavily bunkered, but none of them either look artificial or are overly taxing for the high-handicap player because of a plethora of pits that break their spirit and will.  

Sorry to belabor the point but it's becoming clear to me that the answer to your question is simply, "it depends".  

Rather than ask what the correct number of bunkers might be, it might be useful to consider what makes each of these courses "work" not only in the time they were originally built but also in the modern era.

If I knew the answer, I'd be the first to volunteer it.  However, I don't have a clue.  I just know that in all cases, it works.  

[Forrest Richardson]

Mike — I didn't read the question as whether any specific number was goo or bad. Rather, whether "lots" or "more" might be better. Typically, I'd say "no", more is not usualy better

Designers will make out better for their playing public when they look beyond the sand to other means of requiring thought and problem-solving.

[JCU]

Tom
I do not think it's the number of bunkers or the placment it is the penalty for being in one of the bunkers.  95% of the bunkers are so manicured and are real pretty. You could put a thousand bunkers on a golf course and if they are all perfect they serve no purpose The last time I was in a real hazard was Gullane Hill or the bunkers of Murfield.  I have never played Pine Valley but have seen it numerous times and I believe they are a real hazard.  I often wander why I never complain about hitting it in the rough and not finding the grass perfect or my ball coming to rest in a rut or against a stick and I never complain.  My ball lands in the fairway and comes to rest in a divot I consider myself unlucky.  I land in a bunker(hazard) and it better be sitting perfect and the sand at just the right compaction or heads will roll.   I say reduce the number of bunkers ( Defined as a bunker ) and create more hazards.  

[Norbert P]

Great read.  Thank you gentlemen.

Brauer, love he thumb-block visual exercise.  

  I know I'm not in "the know", but I harken back to a quote by Eddie Hackett to the club management about Carne (taken and skewed from my Swiss cheese memory matter) - "I know there are not many bunkers placed but eventually you'll know where they are needed and can add them accordingly."

  I always thought that was quite a nonegotistical way of saying that the nature of golf and humanity would decide where to place the defiance of nature.

[Brian Phillips]

Darre:

Call me crazy, but I seem to remember hitting a smothered hook on my second shot into a fairway bunker maybe 60-100 yards short left on the road hole.  I think my reaction was something along the lines of "Where did this bunker come from? I don't remember it being here."  I have played the hole only 5 times so I can't be sure.  I remember a lot of things that never happened these days. Can anybody say for sure whether there is a fairway bunker left up near the green on the road hole? I gotta know if I am going crazy.

You are absolutely correct.  There are two before the green on the left:

Progressing 35 yards out and Scholar's 66 yards out

Brian

Sorry how many times have you played TOC Darren...you probably have never bought a strokesaver...if I know you!!

[Darren_Kilfara]

Jim and Brian, of course you're both right - I forgot about Progressing and Scholar's bunkers. That said, my original point still stands...for most golfers not prone to the smothering hook , these bunkers do not really factor in one's strategic accounting of the Road Hole. TOC has a lot of bunkers like this...I disagree with the person who suggested that all of the bunkers at TOC have a purpose. Because the origins of nearly every bunker at TOC were completely natural, many of them evolved in locations which had nothing to do with the eventual placement of the golf holes.

There's a thought, actually...wouldn't it be cool if an architect started with a blank plot of land, designed and constructed all of the bunkers first in the locations that seemed most natural, and only then worried about the routing? Hardly cost-efficient or time-efficient, I know, but I reckon the results of such a methodology might be very interesting indeed!

Cheers,
Darren

(PS - Brian, I own a large number of TOC yardage books, don't you worry about that!)

[Neil Regan]

A hundred years ago an influential voice had an opinion on the question, Are More Bunkers Better ?


From an article by Leighton Calkins in American Golfer, 1910 on The New Baltusrol :

I have laid stress in previous articles on the great need of thorough trapping. With most of our American courses it would be a good thing if you could go around with a kind of pot-bunker pepper-pot [/size]and shake out traps and pits by the hundred; because it would be better thus to sprinkle them about hit or miss than not to have them at all.I suppose most people thought Garden City rather copiously trapped during the Amateur in 1908. Yet nearly a hundred more traps have gone in since.

[Forrest Richardson]

And why, Neil, do we assume Leighton Calkins — a USGA committee member — knows much of anything about what golf courses need?

[Jeff_Brauer]

A hundred years ago an influential voice had an opinion on the question, Are More Bunkers Better ?


From an article by Leighton Calkins in American Golfer, 1910 on The New Baltusrol :

I have laid stress in previous articles on the great need of thorough trapping. With most of our American courses it would be a good thing if you could go around with a kind of pot-bunker pepper-pot [/size]and shake out traps and pits by the hundred; because it would be better thus to sprinkle them about hit or miss than not to have them at all.I suppose most people thought Garden City rather copiously trapped during the Amateur in 1908. Yet nearly a hundred more traps have gone in since.

Would the real advantage of a bunch of 10-12 foot wide pot bunkers be that no superintendent could use a power rake, and thus, the bunkers would be left unraked, and become more of a hazard?

Slag, Thanks.  The thumb block (sounds like a wrestling move will be remembered as my biggest contribution to GCA.

[Neil Regan]

And why, Neil, do we assume Leighton Calkins — a USGA committee member — knows much of anything about what golf courses need?

Forrest,
 
  I would not assume that. But I did assume that he had influence. His articles describe how to improve various golf courses hole-by-hole, and are full of recommendations such as

There should be a pot bunker gouged
out of the side of the hill on the left,
to catch a ball played in that direction
from the tee.

 I don't know if anybody actually paid him any attention, but I think it probable.

Neil

[Forrest Richardson]

Neil —

All golfers have influence, even if a small dose. But this hardly makes such men or women worth quoting, and certainly should not make us leap into changing course just because they said something and it made it to print.

What I find wrong with Leighton's words is that it shows — without much question — his complete misunderstanding of the nature of good hazard placement, and indeed the volume of hazards necessary for a fun and entertaining round of golf.

I suspose he looked across The Old Course and saw a "mess of bunkers...how wonderful!". But what he failed to see was the hundreds of years of study and discussion which went into their exact locations; their remarkable place in the context of shots and thinking; and, of course, their blending with the lay of the land.

 

[Neil Regan]

Forrest,
 
  I agree with you. I was quoting him not to endorse him, but rather as evidence from the early days of opinions such as his.

  But don't take these short quotes as defining Calkins' complete understanding of the subject. He has more to say, some of which I think you would not dispute. But clearly in those early enthusiastic days, many golf courses enacted what might be called The Pepper-Pot Theory of Bunkering.

  When you were younger, did your first designs over-indulge in bunkers ?

Neil

[Forrest Richardson]

I have always sided with less is more, I suppose. My first course had about 30 and my second had just 5! The most I've ever built (finished course) has been in the 40 range.

[Neil Regan]

What about "grass bunkers" ? People often say that these can be preferable to sand bunkers. Do you design as many grass bunkers as sand bunkers ? Do you think that golfers think about them in similar ways ?

  Has any course ever been Pepper-Potted with grass bunkers ?

[Forrest Richardson]

On true linksland there are all sorts of hollows (grassy bunkers) created out of settleing of the sand and low spots. Tom D. can probably attest to this. Drainage is also "not so much an issue."

But on inland courses without sandy soils, peppering grass bunkers is a drainage nightmare. It can be more problematic than building sand bunkers. I believe the recent (1970s and after) drainage industry has create a breed of architects that opt for any hole to solve a drainage pattern. Ratherv than allowing water to runoff and across fairways, naturally.

I have seen well too many courses with loads of grass bunkers put there because there was little thought to natural drainage.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

YES,

Because it neglects the tremendous influence that restrictions on the TEE SHOT place upon the resulting or continuing strategy in approaching the hole.

Take away the hotel and OB and a drive down the right side renders the hole rather simple.

Your grandfather was a wise man.

[A_Clay_Man]

I've never seen a course utilize the grass swale more than Pinon Hills.

Forrest- How does the PH i.e. relate to your earlier post?

[Forrest Richardson]

Adam,

I don't understand...what are you asking?

[A_Clay_Man]

Forrest- You made some general claims about improper placement of grass swales. I just wondered if the nature of PH's drainage, caused or effected the use of grass swales on that site?

[Forrest Richardson]

I assume now, after reading back, that you mean Piρion Hills, nor Phantom Horse!

I have been to Piρion Hills only twice, but I never left feeling that there were too many "dead end" drainage lows. I liked the swales, many draining off to non-turf areas as I recall.

On many new courses there is a bent toward collecting water in pits and relying on drainage to exit it. I disagree with this unless conditions are rite for such a system. It is unnatural to rely on drain basins — unless the grassy area is truly a hazard. I;d say that 95% of such catchments are for drainage, mostly.

[Darren_Kilfara]

TEPaul,

YES,

Because it neglects the tremendous influence that restrictions on the TEE SHOT place upon the resulting or continuing strategy in approaching the hole.

Take away the hotel and OB and a drive down the right side renders the hole rather simple.

Your grandfather was a wise man.

Patrick, I thought it was pretty clear from my initial reply that I wasn't citing the influence of Road Bunker in isolation from the other obstacles to be tackled on the hole - there's the road, the hotel, the out-of-bounds, the rough, the severe and unusual green, even the burn beyond. My point was precisely that fewer bunkers are needed on any given hole where interesting topography and/or other hazards exist to make them relatively moot.

Cheers,
Darren

[Patrick_Mucci]

Darren,

Perhaps I misread your post, but it seemed to overlook the vital nature of the tee shot in helping to create the strategy, along with the other features.

[ForkaB]

Tom D

Responding to your original question, the answer is NO.

I believe that every bunker on every golf course should be required to be justified--hopefully in terms of its effects on the golfer's stragtey, but even if for tirival or ornamental purposes.  I wax nostalgic for the thread I started 3 years or so ago on this forum about far too many modern/retro bunkering schemes as being "eye candy"......

As Johnny Cochrane once said:  "If the bunker don't work, the designer's a jerk."

[Darren_Kilfara]

Perhaps I misread your post, but it seemed to overlook the vital nature of the tee shot in helping to create the strategy, along with the other features.

To be fair to you, Patrick, I did frame my comments within the context of the green complex. But I think it would be remiss to evaluate the usefulness of ANY bunker on any course without analyzing it in the context of the entire hole - wouldn't you agree? (A greenside bunker - or any other hazard, for that matter - on e.g. a par 4 cannot be great unless it impacts the strategy of the tee shot, just as a fairway bunker on a par 4 cannot be great unless it impacts one's angle of approach to the green.)

Cheers,
Darren

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