Pat -
On your comments below: well done! I could not agree more! Yes, Friar's Head is, in many ways, a return and a celebration of golf's old verities!
And, it goes well beyond bunkers, there, too:
1) A design that is more about width, strategy and angles than it is about length and repetition.
2) A routing that is completely natural and blends into its setting (taking you from the dunes into the field and back again).
3) No sprinkler heads marked for yardages - instead, yardages in a book from natural objects like a tree, hump in the fairway, dune, etc.
But, to stay on topic, the bunkers are extraordinary. Many look as though they have been there for 50 years or more - the fairway bunker on 18 even looks prehistoric! By the way, why should there be rakes? Aren't bunkers hazards to begin with? Whatever became of rub-of-the-green? Where is it written that golf is supposed to be fair?
In my opinion, it's about time that someone (or some group of folks) got it right!
Go Kenny go!
Mike Young & TEPaul,
Boy, are you going to LOVE Friar's Head.
NO RAKES, IN OR NEAR THE BUNKERS.
That's right, NO RAKES ON THE GOLF COURSE.
Bunkers at Friar's Head are being returned to HAZARDS.
Ken Bakst is clearly trying to change the "culture" of golf, returning it to what most on this site appreciate, on many levels. His efforts are to be applauded.