Bunkers as hazards....

[Bob_Huntley]

Listening to the plethora of Golf Broadcast annoucers opining that "Tiger, Phil, Vijay and uncle Tom Cobley and all,  would rather be in a bunker than in greenside rough" why on earth don't we do the following?

1. From the Wednesday of the Pro-Am, remove all rakes from the course. Do not allow any improvement of the condition of the bunker. ( We have this on the sand dune to front and right of our ninth hole at the Dunes Course. Hit an errant shot and you could be in a footprint inches deep.)

2. Replace the sand with grass and make it gnarley.

A simplistic suggestion I know, but it would stop the automatic up and down one sees most of thre time.

Bob

[Eric Franzen]

Or why not just build/design bunkers that really are hazards?

[paul cowley]

Eric ...my feelings exactly.
Time will tell how successful I will be in acting on them.

[Michael Hayes]

As a greenkeeper, I belive that the "Augusta Syndrome" has hurt golf in two very damaging ways:
1. Green is Good.  
2. Bunker maintenance.  

Bunkers are the single biggest labor expense at a Private Club.  Handraking is mandatory and crisp edges are called for.  Regular trips to check the sand depth must be made and corrective action taken.  Don't spend the time and money to do this and watch a Super go crazy.  Membership sees TV golf and puts the onus on us to give them what they see.  But there is no money in the budget to replace sand annually like at ANGC.

Believe me, if bunkers were left to the greenkeepers to manage, instead of the green committees, THEY WOULD BE HAZARDS!

MH

[JohnV]

Bring back the Oakmont rakes!

[RSLivingston_III]

It seems like mainstream golfers increasingly want courses to look hard, but are not particularly challenging.
Could this be a deliberate attempt to advance the de-skilling of golf?
Do the highly maintained bunkers require little or no practice to succesfully play out of?

[TEPaul]

Unfortunately, for a whole series of reasons that've been evolving for probably over 100 or more years in golf the perception of what bunkers are supposed to be and to do in golf has almost totally changed. In effect almost an about-face has evolved in the perception amongst golfers of what they are supposed to be and do.

The complication arises in that for most people even beautifully and consistently maintained sand bunker surfaces are still tricky to play out of but with elite players it's basically a total snap as they are the only ones who seem to have acquired the skill to recover consistently from them. In this way bunkers are now not much more than another totally maintained part of the course where elite players consistently apply a separate skill set.

This is pretty ironic when one considers what bunkers in golf were originally intended to be and to do which was basically arrange, set and dictate golf strategy for all. They do that effectively only when their sand surfaces were unmaintained. Obviously elite players probably objected to this first since they're the first to resist one of their skill sets being reduced to almost total randomness and luck.

One might even try to draw some analogy to unmaintained sand surfaces with the randomness and luck of recovery from rough, even for elite players. Perhaps that analogy has never and would never work particularly well as there's nothing particularly defined in golf with rough as there is with bunkering so what you're actually "getting out of" is not so analogous.   Not to mention the fact that "rough" has no definition, distinction or segregation within the Rules of Golf from the rest of "through the green" areas.

I feel that one of these days some high profile club will decide to no longer maintain (rake) the sand in their bunkers and will make it more than evident why they've decided to do that by using a prominently displayed sign for all to see (perrhaps on their scorecard too) that says:

"Our bunker sand surfaces are unmaintained (unraked) on purpose, and if you have a complaint about that our only advice is to simply do your best to avoid them."

[Craig Sweet]

Getting out of a bunker has a lot to do with how they are maintained. For the most part on the PGA tour the bunker sand on the walls is thin to allow the ball to roll back to the bottom. And then the bottom is consistant.

 You hardly ever see a ball stay on a bunker wall on the PGA tour.

[RSLivingston_III]

I think this also brings us back to the "risk/reward" senerio where if you are trying to cut a corner over fairway bunkers you are supposed to be penalized for not successfully executing the shot. If those bunkers are some flat pan sand pit that is resonably easy to hit out from and probably still make the green, where is the increased skill to recover?
Is there a movement in the game to reduce skills that require practice?

[ForkaB]

Bob

I'll vote enthusiastically for #2, but only for greenside bunkers.  Most of them are more eye candy than real hazards these days, no matter how cleverly they are designed.

#1 is too evil and antediluvian--even for me.  You might as well disallow the fixing of pitchmarks on greens, roll the ball back to the guttie and bring back the stymie....

[RSLivingston_III]

Rich,
Have you ever played a real gutty? Do you know what it would give the game if the modern ball was reperformanced to the equivalent of the gutty?

[paul cowley]

Good post Tom.....in the future I plan on ranking my bunkers on a difficulty scale of 1 thru 10....with 1 being puttable and 10 being Death [and with the liberal use thereof]....as for rakes, I plan on their inclusion but they will be modified and fitted with a handle not to exceed 4 [four] inches.

I feel strongly these measures could redefine bunkers as places one might hope to visit.

[paul cowley]

Ralph ...for me its not the gutty thats the problem, but having to use a spoon to extricate oneself.....I tend to avoid bunkers in archaic play as I would a tar pit

[RSLivingston_III]

Paul,
when you get a good Niblck and get the requisite amount of PRACTICE with it, it is no more difficult than with a modern wedge.
I will be happy to demonstrate this summer.

[paul cowley]

Ralph...did they use niblicks in the 1830's?

[RSLivingston_III]

Paul,
I didn't realize you were talking about the Feather ball era. It is not something I have studyed much, yet. They probably used something that resembled a large blade Lofter. Jeff Ellis (A Clubmaker's Art) references a news account from St. Andrews where the snow has closed the course and the golfers resorted to playing on the beach. It states the players were "out and out" using cleeks, which is considered a highly reprehensible practice on the course. As you probably know Wood clubs were the norm and iron head clubs were reserved for trouble shots. It was probably 1860 or so before Iron clubs were used for approach shots. A club used from the bunker would still be refered to as a cleek, even though it later became one of a family of long irons. If you have the book, check page 105 and look at the Heavy Iron on that page.

[Mark_Fine]

Forrest and I just found out that our book on bunkers/hazards was the #2 seller out of 95 titles at the GIS show in Atlanta.  Maybe there is hope for the bunker yet!  Many Superintendents told us they were excited about the book and were even buying copies for their Greens Chairman to read.  Reversing trends takes time but hopefully it will help the cause.

[paul cowley]

Ralph....I have acquired a lofter which I think is pre 1880's design, which still just allows for one to get out of a hazard[maybe].....I think[I know] that prior to the iron clubs, long neck woods or spoons are fairly hopeless for bunker play and maybe the design of the linksish sand areas allowed for that.
...traps really were traps.
But I do mix eras with later balls, all pre Haskell....I play alot alone, if and when I ever play at all.

[Tom_Doak]

I was just out at Pacific Dunes last week and I'm amazed at how gnarly some of the bunkers are getting.  Some of them are 2-3 feet deeper than the original depth with overhanging lips and patches of hardpan in the bottom.  They do provide rakes, but some are so steep and deep that a rake isn't going to help much.

And yet they seem to be accepted by visitors!  People still enjoy the golf course and I haven't heard anyone complain directly about the difficulties they present.  I think we get away with it because it looks natural and people understand that the weather is having its way with them.  I don't think you could get away with it next to stripe-mowed rye fairways, though.

[Ryan Farrow]

As a greenkeeper, I belive that the "Augusta Syndrome" has hurt golf in two very damaging ways:
1. Green is Good.  
2. Bunker maintenance.  

Bunkers are the single biggest labor expense at a Private Club.  Handraking is mandatory and crisp edges are called for.  Regular trips to check the sand depth must be made and corrective action taken.  Don't spend the time and money to do this and watch a Super go crazy.  Membership sees TV golf and puts the onus on us to give them what they see.  But there is no money in the budget to replace sand annually like at ANGC.

Believe me, if bunkers were left to the greenkeepers to manage, instead of the green committees, THEY WOULD BE HAZARDS!

MH

Spending last summer raking bunkers pretty much every other day I don't see how it is that costly. At least at the country club I worked at there were about 60 bunkers and a group of two or three people could hand rake the entire course in about 4 hours. But if every bunker was full of grass clippings and leaves then it would be a lot more work, time, and money. They also got trimmed probably twice a month. But I could imagine how expensive it is to replace all of the sand. As long as a course doesn’t have 200 bunkers they really aren’t that much of a maintenance hassle from my experience.

And I’ve been tempted to leave the sandcastles that kids would make on our number 2 greenside bunkers. It would be a nice surprise for the members.

[Garland Bayley]

Maybe they should remove the rakes from the course and tell the players they can carry 14 clubs or they can carry 13 clubs and and rake to clean up after themselves. Then we would find out how selfless the players really are.  

[Kyle Harris]

As a greenkeeper, I belive that the "Augusta Syndrome" has hurt golf in two very damaging ways:
1. Green is Good.  
2. Bunker maintenance.  

Bunkers are the single biggest labor expense at a Private Club.  Handraking is mandatory and crisp edges are called for.  Regular trips to check the sand depth must be made and corrective action taken.  Don't spend the time and money to do this and watch a Super go crazy.  Membership sees TV golf and puts the onus on us to give them what they see.  But there is no money in the budget to replace sand annually like at ANGC.

Believe me, if bunkers were left to the greenkeepers to manage, instead of the green committees, THEY WOULD BE HAZARDS!

MH

Spending last summer raking bunkers pretty much every other day I don't see how it is that costly. At least at the country club I worked at there were about 60 bunkers and a group of two or three people could hand rake the entire course in about 4 hours. But if every bunker was full of grass clippings and leaves then it would be a lot more work, time, and money. They also got trimmed probably twice a month. But I could imagine how expensive it is to replace all of the sand. As long as a course doesn’t have 200 bunkers they really aren’t that much of a maintenance hassle from my experience.

And I’ve been tempted to leave the sandcastles that kids would make on our number 2 greenside bunkers. It would be a nice surprise for the members.

Ryan,

Believe it or not you may be proving the cost point. I'll assume a 6 day work week, meaning you raked the bunkers 3 times a week. I'll also assume an April to October season.

That's 28 weeks, or 84 instances of bunker raking with each instance involving 12 man hours. In total, you spend 1008 man hours raking bunkers. I'll assume you are paid $9.00/hr to do this. So that's almost $10,000 in salary alone to rake the bunkers for the year. Also factor in cost of motive power used to get to each bunker (gas and maintenance for the carry-all) AND the oppurtunity cost (what other maintenance/work could have been doing during those 4 hours a day?) and you can see this adds up pretty quickly even for a modest course.

[Patrick_Mucci_Jr]

Bob,

Robert Randquist, a consumate professional, wrote a white paper on bunkers and the nature of a hazard, that was published on this site.

I believe that there was a missing piece of the puzzle that Bob was assembling, a survey from superintendents.

Anyone who hasn't read Bob's white paper should do so, as it was highly informative.

From a personal perspective, I'd like to see PGA Tour bunkers.... unprepared.   I'd like to see them untouched for a month prior to a tournament.

For member play, I"d like to see them groomed on a "needs" rather than a scheduled basis.

They've ceased being the hazard they were intended to be.

[rgkeller]

Judging from the "best" of modern architecture, it is not important that bunkers be hazards or even in play so long as they are pretty.

[Craig Sweet]

2-3 guys were raking a bunker every 4 minutes? By hand?

Hmmmm......