How Many Centerline Bunkers Were There?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Over on the Golf Magazine 2006 Best New Thread mention is made of the centerline bunkers at Ledararch, and how they aren't built so much any more.......

I hear that comment many times here, but the old aerial photos many post here rarely show centerline bunkers from the golden age.........other than the bottle hole at NGLA and a few others.

Is the idea that the old guys built more centerline bunkers the second biggest myth on golf club atlas (behind the ground game was prominent in the 1930's)?

[Mike_Cirba]

Jeff,

I think center-line, and "in fairway" bunkering has had a resurgence in recent years due largely to a conscious attempt by any number of architects to recapture Golden Age concepts.  What makes several of the fairway bunkers at Lederach so different is that a number of them are blind.

And no, I don't think that it was rare during the Golden Age, but in fact quite prevalent  What happened is that many fairways shrunk, many bunkers disappeared, and many trees were planted during the intervening years.  When one looks at early courses by folks like Travis, Tillinghast, Ross, Emmett, Thomas, and Mackenzie there are countless examples.

Have a look at Hollywood GC by Travis for a very obvious example.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jeff,

That's a good question.

Perhaps an expansion or exaggeration of what golfers observe at TOC.

My rationale for the scarcity of centerline features has to do with the ability of riding mowers to maintain the areas around them.

They were/are viewed as an intrusion in the maintainance process.

[Jeff_Brauer]

My own question got me to thinking about my own centerline bunkers.  I have always been interested in using them and here is a brief summary of my own designs:

1993 - Wild Wing 9 - Bottle Hole (line of bunkers/grass bunkers)
1994 - Tangle Ridge 18 - Sucker FW with pond carry and dividing bunker on short par 5
1995 - Ridgeview Ranch - Centerline Steep Bank
1998 - Whitestone - Centerline Grass Bunker
1999 - Wild Horse 11 (at the time) short, elevated center bunkers require forced carry, blind drive
2000 - Cowboys - 9 - Centerline Tree, 18 - Second landing area Bottle Hole Bunkers
2002 - Colbert Hills 13 - Bottle Hole Bunkering
2004 - The Quarry 13 and 18 have centerline bunkers
2004 - Indian Creek No. 4 (short 4)
2005 - The Wilderness at Fortune Bay - 1,4,16 have centerline rock ledges
2005 - Wilderness at Lake Jackson - 15 centerline bunker
2006 - Sand Creek Station 15 - CL bunker on short 4

I have a couple in planning for 2007 and I am sure I missed a few on my earlier work.  You can tell from the pattern that, unless constricted by housing, I find a way to incorporate one in about half my designs.  

Did Ross and others do more?

Isn't a centerline bunker just another name for a double fw?

For that matter, is the use of a centerline bunker really a defining quality of good golf course design?  

Like the Biarritz, are they destined to always be modified for practical reasons?

While its possible to design a gull wing or "A Frame" green that rewards being on the same or opposite sides of the center bunker, (esp. when the prevailing wind trails knocking off spin) most double fw or centerline bunker holes end up being figured out over time, and often, the preference for one side or the other (and the expense of mowing a little used fw) cause the other to be removed.  

I am an optimist, so I continue to use them, figuring them as nice change of pace holes that are conversation pieces.  Hopefully contributing enough to the course to remain.....

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

Our posts crossed.  I do remember the old Hollywood photos, but does one course make it prevalent? Where are some more?  Maybe everyone should just list one they remember to get a list going.  My hunch is that it wouldn't be more than one or two holes per Golden Age architect.  If their portfolios covered 500 golden age courses, it would be interesting to see how many really had them.

In Dan Moore's Chicago photos, and don't recall seeing many on those from midwest gca's, but I also look at other photos of the biggies and really don't see all that many center bunkers past the east coast influence of CBMac at NGLA, Emmit at Garden City, etc.  

I agree that fairways straightened and narrowed, but my impression in looking at all the old photos is that the fw bunkers were side bunkers that protruded more than they do now, but not center bunkers.  The narrowing took away some subtle landing areas near the edges of the fw in favor of pure hit the center accuracy.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

First fast flatness, now questioning the use of centerline bunkers....tisk tisk....

Actually, my good friend, I know of a lot of courses where the practice did occur at least once, twice, three, four, five, etc., etc., etc. in a round. The challenge of taking a bunker on, head on, making you think how and where to avoid is the very root of great stratgeirierieierie in all of golf. This statement includes one-shot holes.

I also hate the term, "centerline." It reminds me of term Robert Trent Jones would have come with, as well as would have avoided.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tommy,

I don't need a lecture on the value of cl bunkers, and I'm not really speaking against their use.  See my above post.  However, if you know of courses, name names and post old photos.  

One of the reasons I think its a myth, or at least an overstatement of the facts vs. the number used in modern architecture, is because everyone here shakes their head, tells me tsk, tsk, and says they were used, but doesn't really counter the photographic evidence.

Its like the politicians mentioning some old lady who (name whatever problem they want to solve) and trying to tell us that her problem is universal, when it may not be.

Or, for that matter, its like the college orgy with the best looking sorority girls that everyone has heard about, but no one has ever attended.........

Personally, I think prolific use of centerline bunkers in any age of gca are an urban myth!

[Adam Clayman]

Jeff, You obviously see value iin using them. Why the diss?
 
Maybe it isn't translating in cyberspace but you do appear to be dissing them. Asking for, and not getting any proof of their general use in American history isn't proof of anything.

I believe it was Behr who warned of the wrong road American GCA was taking as early as 1923.

The only course I am intimately familiar with pre that year is Pebble beach. And guess what, PB has a good number of forced carries over bunkers that are directly in one's line of instinct.

Tommy, Don't hate the use of the term centerline. How else does one convey the concept and placement to the uninitiated?

I had the great pleasure of having access to a young mind yesterday. A friend of our friend's son, this young man was keenly into computers and video games. When I asked him if he had any interest in golf, he lit up when describing how he loved hitting over water and other hazards to the green.

The concept of freshman came immediately to mind.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Yes, Jeff, Riviera never used centerline bunkers, either did Ojai, Bel Air, LACC and all of the other Thomas courses you can think of. It's all urban myth even though there are images and aerial photos showing them. That bunker on Riv #6, the one that fronts the green, as well as the one that's in the center of the green....pure fiction! Also, there used to be a really nice looking bunker(s) that crossed the cneterline of the 10th, but one of your colleagues has recently turned it into a cocktail hour joke!

(Also, I'm abstaining from posting anymore aerial photos from the 20 & 30's, simply because they have become too valuable and how they can be misused and misrepresented.)

The same goes for SFGC, Baltusrol, Philly Cricket Club and Winged Foot and his contribution of Hell's Half Acre at Pine Valley on many other Tillie courses. Ross, well Urban myth is correct, he never used them once at Plainfield or Aronomink.

Flynn, well it's all in our imagination that the centerline bunker at #10 at Lehigh, maybe one of the best placed bunkers ever, even exists. It too is Urban Legend. He never once used a centerline bunker at Shinnecock. It's wild and vivid imagination, all of that sand he used there.

MacDonald never used them once in his entire design career even though the do exist at all of his courses. Urban Myth has proved us wrong once again. It's all hubris...We are just speaking out of our asses. Pardon me, do you have a breath mint?

MacKenzie, let's not even go there! The guy was just as full of it as I am!

Call Snokes. Better yet, pick-up Geoff's Golden Age book and see just how right your statement is.... We are all wrong Jeff. We are just simply wrong!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Adam, Your right, There probably isn't a better term for it, but when it comes from a modern context, it's just too.....gimmicky. (fot the lack of a better word.)

Your also right about Max. He didn't like the direction architecture was going, simply because the sport was new and vibrant. Many people didin't know what a golf course should look like or play like, the geometric age is proof of this. Many of these architects like John Duncan Dunn, Willie Watson, even Donald Ross, were instructors to America how the Game should be played. Count Max as one of them, who as passionate and resolute as he could be--saw the direction, this "fad" called golf and wanted to show the world that it wasn't as they percieved it, more, it was a way of life. A very "ingenius," "sporting" way of life.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Adam,

Sorry if the tone sounds like it. I need to go to the office briefly, and will check my own aerials from Geoff's book, etc.  Perhaps I am wrong, and I do know they were used, I just wonder if they were used as much as some people think when the pine away for the good old days.

Tommy,

Maybe we are talking semantics.  While I recall a few center bunkers at Cypress Point, for example, most are what I would call protruding bunkers.  And, yes, those are in the line of charm for most of those gca architects, as was the custom of the day.  As for Riv 6, I guess I am thinking of fw bunkers, not fronting bunkers on greens or par 3's.

For that matter, other than the fifth at Shinny, I consider most of Flynns bunkers there protruders, since the fw doesn't go around both sides, but they are angled carry bunkers for the most part.  If you call thoes centerline bunkers, then I have no argument with that use.

Please tell me how making historical documents available can be missued or misrepresented?  Yes, that can happen with any history, I suppose, but if its there in black and white, it can also be refuted if done.  

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Jeff,
Surely any bunker that is between you and the intended target would have to be considered centerline, no? (Hence my thoughts on the term, Centerline. I would just like to find a better term for it, but now that I think of it, George Thomas even used the term.)

Shinnecock, in it's day was far more complex then it is today--at least in the terms of bunkering. There were hundreds of areas which could be called sand hazards, or deemed bunkers, many of them in and out of the line of play, or designed to be influential in deceiving the line of play. That to me is the kind of stuff that is rarrely practiced anymore, if only an assorted few.

[RJ_Daley]

I'll try and understand what Jeff said, and what I think is missing in his assessment.  CL bunkering becomes protruding bunkering, when it protruded from rough.  But, as Mike Cirba suggests, the old courses were wider (not restrained by a need to contain irrigation to a defined width).  Thus, the FWs and short rough were mowed around many bunkers that were more bottled, or offset, yet centered when an approach came from a more favored (or missed side) of a FW, and they evolved by narrowing maintenance to protruding from rough that was now brought all the way into the bunkers.  Look at places like Royal Melbourne.  

TOC has bunkers that vary from centerline to offset due to the wide angles of attack and where balls can run on firm and fast widely askew of a centerline concept of play, either by overplayed shots running too far along, or hit there on purpose to get a different angle into pins protected further by random green contours, humps and hollows.

Irrigation is the eraser of CL bunkering at many older courses that were intended to play from wider options, along with modern rough line mowing, IMHO.

I believed Tommy is so very correct in this, Jeff.  There seems to be some archies that get this and find a way to provide this, and others that don't or won't, for various core philosophy reasons, IMO.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tommy,

I suppose you are right there, but I was calling them bunkers with fw on both sides.  And, I know that the bunkering has been greatly reduced at Shinny, like other places, and holes like the 8th once had a slew of bunkers short left which was eventually reduced to the few that "really count" in play (i.e. those nearest the landing area) while other, more visual bunkers that were further off line got eliminated probably for obvious maintenance reasons.  

RJ,

As promised, I am at the office now and looking over Wexlers missing links.  While I haven't looked at every rendering or old photo, I do not see him depicting fw outside many of the protruding bunkers as you suggest.  Nor, frankly, do I really see that in many old photos either.

You say center bunkers became protruders. I say protruding, or optional carry bunkers became flanking bunkers on straighter fairways.  And yes, for fifty years, gca's (or club committees, since its older clubs where these have been eliminated, obviously) have reduced use of  in favor of flanking bunkers.  

I think we both agree that the design emphasis has become hitting between bunkers, not hitting over them and that trees and irrigation have narrowed and straightened play corridors, and taken out the zig zag nature of the fw that the golden agers used to offer different lines of play.  

I would offer that Mike Strantz designs offered as much zig zag as anything Ross or others ever did!

I would also ask the question of whether a course full of optional carry bunkers (or centerline so Tommy knows what we are talking about ) is any more interesting than one full of flanking bunkers?  I can only assess from things like Wexlers old routings and other old photos, and a few courses like Royal Melbourne that are similar to what they were.  

However, from those photos, I imagine the shot demands and visuals of 18 holes with optional forced carries might have been as repetitive as any modern design in a different style!

I have given it a lot of thought, and feel there are merits to each kind of shot for many reasons.  Thus, I try to design a course with a mixture of tee shot types, with some forced layups, some optional forced carries, some flanking bunkers on one side or the other, some with cross slopes, some with true center bunkers, some with rolling fairway contours, and even some RTJ pinching bunkers on both sides of the fw.  On few occaisions (although I don't know if the strategic value is as strong) I use random bunkers or contours in the fw that make no sense, and may not give any advantage to hitting anywhere.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Jeff, Variety.

That's what it's all about. Not one set or formula throughout, but diferent aspects. You throw some in and you leave some out. While I fully support the notion of looking at the old courses in books andmagazines and in photos, nothing is better then taking all of that and seeing it in person and going from there--as far as inspiration is concerned.

Riviera used to be perfect for this. Sadly, it is disappearing quickly, swiftly. It was once a great school.

Dick wisely brought-up the Old Course, because that's the first place I think of when it comes to topics like this. (Riviera, Friar's Head and NGLA close seconds) There is a lot going on at those courses that can be taken in by those that really want to understand it and those that just want to play golf. (realize I sound like a prude, but there really is some impressive stuff going on at these places which help understanding the big picture. At least the picture I think I'm looking at!)

[RJ_Daley]

Jeff, are we looking at the same book, "Missing Links"?  I'll admit that the various overview sketchs of routings in green FW and white outboard areas shows many (if you assume white to be strictly a concept of heavy rough) as not showing many FWs mowed around the protruding bunkers or flanking bunkers.  But, when looks at the old grainy photos, one sees that the FW or intermediate rough is appears to be cut more outward and around many of the flanking or proturding bunkers.  Then, considering the that the single row irrigation came in, and forced many of those old courses to narrow from the outboard edges around bunkers, and redefine the size of pinching or off set crossing bunkers to appear even more further flanking, I think one gets an impression that wasn't really what existed back then.  Even the overview routing plans Dan provides have plenty of depictions of actual centerline, crossing and diagonal carry bunkers by various old timer archies.

Don't make me start citing pages now!!!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Go get'em Dick!

[RJ_Daley]

grrrr, arf, arf, says the little dust mop scottie...







Barney for Sec. of Defense!

[BCrosby]

Jeff -

I'm late to the thread, but I'm unaware of anyone that claimed that CL bunkers were built frequently in the Golden Age. But they were certainly in the toolbox. Several come to mind:

- MacD's/Raynor's principal's nose bunkers
- MacK at Cypress (17) and ANGC (11, 14, both NLE)
- Ross designed one at Athens CC (NLE)
- Do topshot bunkers count as CL bunkers?

There were others I don't recall, but my guess is that even in the GA there weren't a lot of them.

I would think that the demise of the few that were built was due primarily to the fact that as good players got longer with steel shafts and new balls, CL bunkers started catching only weaker players.

Bob

 

[Tom Roewer]

Chicago Golf Club definitely has the most that i've played on.  I really like the look of those bunkers that go to the Fairway cut and the rest is in surrounded by fairway cut.  Visually they're great and strategically they put cricks in otherwise fairly straight holes.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff -

I'm late to the thread, but I'm unaware of anyone that claimed that CL bunkers were built frequently in the Golden Age. But they were certainly in the toolbox. Several come to mind:

- MacD's/Raynor's principal's nose bunkers
- MacK at Cypress (17) and ANGC (11, 14, both NLE)
- Ross designed one at Athens CC (NLE)
- Do topshot bunkers count as CL bunkers?

There were others I don't recall, but my guess is that even in the GA there weren't a lot of them.

I would think that the demise of the few that were built was due primarily to the fact that as good players got longer with steel shafts and new balls, CL bunkers started catching only weaker players.

Bob

 

Bob,

That was my contention. I know they were in the toolbox, but I think the idea of fw as target w/o bunkers in it was pretty standard.  Perhaps I overread into statements like "NO one builds centerline bunkers like on the old courses."  

Tommy pointed out that on a gentle dog leg, an inside bunker is in the center of the line of charm, and he considers that a CL bunker, but I do not.  I favor examples like Augusta 11 which I had forgotten about, but that is why I asked!  Of course, originally, I think that was a large green fronting bunker, and then left in place when the green moved.

I also agree with you (rather than Pat M who says its maintenance) that the reason they decreased over the years is they caught the wrong players.  As has been noted here, good players often miss left and right, but they rarely fall short, so the Golden Age idea of protruding carry bunkers may appeal to mid handicappers (if used in moderation)  but also slow play without giving the better player as much to worry about.

[BCrosby]

Jeff -

Agreed. Inside dogleg bunkers, even if they extend into the FW, are not CL bunkers.

A small factual correction. It was the 10th at ANGC where the current CL bunker started life as a green fronting bunker. The 11th had a CL bunker (based on a CL bunker at Woking that Bobby Jones liked) that was removed in the late '30's, probably by Maxwell. A semi-CL bunker on 14 was removed at about the same time.

Bob

[Jeff_Brauer]

My bad.  Wasn't that the one his father hit in and asked what the heck was it doing there?

[BCrosby]

That's the one.

The story about Jones's father is probably not true. There are aerials of the 11th that show the CL bunker as late as '38.

Bob

[Mark_Fine]

Jeff,
There are quite a few!  I have a series of them that I show in one of my presentations on bunkers.  I don't have time to post some photos now but maybe later in the week if you are really interested.  

FYI - Gil Hanse made the comment to me for an interview in our Hazards book that, "Centerline bunkers should perhaps be the rule rather than the exception when it comes to fairway hazards".  He went on to say that, "It's a concept that American golfers may not be ready for, although I wouldn't mind testing the hypothesis".  

Got to run!
Mark